


and the river flows beneath your skin

by Deisderium



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Artist Steve Rogers, Chronically Ill Steve Rogers, Embarrassment, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Everyone's an Artist Somehow, M/M, Magical architecture, Masturbation, Mention of past bullying and gaslighting, Mentions of Cancer, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, School Play, Soul Bond, Tattooed Steve Rogers, Theater Nerd Bucky Barnes, Underage Drinking, mild jealousy, omg they were roommates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:40:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 47,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29297514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deisderium/pseuds/Deisderium
Summary: Steve crosses his arms, feeling more than a little defensive. "Look, it's not my first choice either, but there's no other option. There's literally not another room in all of Susquehanna with space for me."Bucky looks as though his soul is about to leave his body in sheer annoyance. "I just—I really thought I was going to have a single this year.""Yeah?" Steve keeps himself from snapping, but only just. "I thought I was going to have a room this year."*In which Steve and Bucky are forced to room together their senior year at boarding school, and accidentally soul bond to each other even though they kind of hate each other. All they have to do to get out of it is not kiss each other for a year so the accidental bond will fade. How hard could it be?
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 211
Kudos: 188





	1. in which Steve returns to school

**Author's Note:**

> In news that will suprise no one, this little AU has careened wildly--W I L D L Y--out of control. It is mostly but not completely written, and will be posting weekly, though possibly i will get excited when i finish it and speed up the schedule. 2020 really dealt a hit to my ability to focus on one project, and 2021 is not much different so far, so i'm hoping that giving myself a schedule to write for will help me focus on this one, which has been so much fun to write during a completely banapants year. 
> 
> I didn't go to boarding school, so I mined from friends' experiences and my own college years. Is this a reasonable setup for high school age kids? who knows! It was fun for fiction, and where I have looked at it and said "huh, would it really work that way?", I always tried to lean toward what would be entertaining instead of what would be realistic. I know for a fact that no one would have a school play during finals week because that would be cruel to the students, but i have happily inflicted it on the students of The Rivers specifically to make Bucky lose his mind. 
> 
> The rating right now is M but it might go up to E. If/when I update that tag or any others, I'll note it in the a/n for that chapter. All that said, hope you enjoy! <3 <3 <3
> 
> ETA: I forgot to mention, the title is from Running to the Sea by Royksopp :D

**September**

Steve Rogers doesn't know what brought him to this point.

He was meant to come back from summer break to room with Sam, his best friend. Instead, the housing department seems not to know that he exists at all, despite having taken his mother's money and processed all the paperwork for his financial aid, despite having housed him the year before and the two years before that, and despite having sent him one hundred and one little pieces of mail over the summer, reminders of the reading list and summer assignments and supplies needed for the new year. Despite all that, he now, at the beginning of September, is, apparently, without a room at all, and the semester is gearing up to start, like, on Monday.

The harried woman at the office had been sympathetic, but said there weren’t much in the way of options for him. Steve had found himself clenching his jaw, and trying not to panic as he told her that he had been guaranteed a room in Susquehanna, the artsiest of all the dorms. He'd gotten in that dorm his sophomore year, and quickly found he didn't want to live anywhere else. Besides, it was where all his friends were going to be this year. If he ended up stuck in a different dorm for his senior year he was going to—well, he was going to embarrass himself by breaking into tears in the office, was what he was going to do.

She had listened to his protests, but not sure that she could help until finally, she looked up from her computer and said "aha!" Her fingers moved on the keys in a symphony of clicks and the occasional beep that Steve desperately hoped meant he was getting a room. Even the weird room under the staircase—at this point he didn't care. 

"There is one other senior who doesn't have a roommate," she said.

"Anything," he'd said. Just please don't let him end up in one of the other dorms. Not Niagara, or god forbid, Allegheny. It would be torture, at least compared to being with the people he loved and who were gong to be working with him closely on their senior year project.

She squinted at the screen. "Barnes."

Steve's heart sank into his toes. Maybe there was more than one Barnes in the senior class. And who was also in the arts dorm. And who might have had a roommate who'd been kicked out between junior and senior year for reasons Steve can't quite remember.

Now, however, as Steve is walking up the steps to the top floor of Susquehanna, dragging his giant suitcase behind him, he's certain in his heart of hearts that there's only one person his roommate could be, because that's just how his luck runs. He was supposed to be rooming with his best friend, his days of figuring out a new roommate firmly in the past, but he's going to be stuck—his senior year!—with a jerk who's hated him since sophomore year.

Steve sighs, and knocks on the door. Room 313, as if he didn't have enough bad luck all on his own.

A muffled, "Yeah?" comes through the thick wooden door

Steve's never been in room 313, although this will be his third year living in Susquehanna (thank you, harried office lady!); tradition dictates that people live on the first floor their first year and it's random assignments after that. The building is old, a big wooden house dating back to 1917. It was an inn originally, and the rooms are all different sizes and layouts, with room for triple, doubles, and much-coveted singles. He has no idea what kind of set up this will be with two of them.

He knocks again, and a few long seconds of barely-discernible muttering later, the door opens.

Bucky Barnes is regrettably handsome, Steve would never think of trying to deny that. Even during the completely undeserved detention they'd had to sit through together sophomore year, while Steve had been fuming about what an asshole he was, he'd also been uncomfortably aware that Bucky Barnes, theater nerd and soccer player, was unfortunately hot. 

The intervening years have done nothing to ease the situation. Bucky is still hot, and in fact now he's _more_ hot, which seems entirely unfair because Steve is still at least half a foot shorter than him and lanky, while Bucky is tall and built and, as Steve is now unfortunately aware, tan all over the smooth skin of his torso, which Steve can see all of because Bucky Barnes stands before him in sweatpants and no shirt. Who answers the door in no shirt? Obviously, guys who are aware that they're just this hot. He's muscular in a way that should be illegal for someone in a theater concentration, and Steve's gaze is immediately drawn to the faint tracing of veins over the jut of his hips. He drags his gaze to Bucky's face, mortified that his first encounter with his roommate is already going in a _Steve is a creep_ direction. 

Bucky doesn't seem to have noticed, though, thankfully, because his own eyes seem to have snagged on the suitcase that Steve is dragging behind him. "What do you want?" he says.

It's abrupt and kind of dickish, thank god, because otherwise Steve was just going to sit there and mentally compose odes to his hipbones and he's not even in the Creative Writing concentration.

Steve holds out the paper from the office to Bucky. He's hot and sweaty and it's not even noon, but he's already had an emotional day and he's tired. "The housing office fucked up and didn't give me a room, and yours is the only one left in Susquehanna with space for a roommate."

Bucky takes the paper, his jaw set, a muscle ticking in the corner. Steve knows he can't possibly be angry at him personally, but he still looks pissed, and to Steve's annoyance he finds he wants to apologize and isn't quite sure why, especially since none of this is his fault. _He's_ the one done wrong by, here. _He's_ the one the school apparently forgot about.

"They promised," Bucky mutters. The hand not holding the paper is clenched into a fist.

Steve crosses his arms, feeling more than a little defensive. "Look, it's not my first choice either, but there's no other option. There's literally not another room in all of Susquehanna with space for me."

Bucky looks as though his soul is about to leave his body in sheer annoyance. "I just—I really thought I was going to have a single this year."

"Yeah?" Steve keeps himself from snapping, but only just. "I thought I was going to have a room this year."

At that, Bucky deflates at least a little. "I'll call the office," he mutters. "Maybe there's something they can do."

With Herculean effort, Steve manages to keep himself from saying something snide about what Bucky thinks they're going to do any different for him than they already did for Steve. Steve doesn't know him that well, but from the outside it seems like Bucky Barnes is some kind of golden boy and things really do try and line themselves up to happen the way he wants. As long as Steve has a room in this dorm, he doesn't really give a shit who he's rooming with. It doesn't have to be Bucky. In fact, he'd much rather it be almost anyone else besides Bucky. Not that he's going to say that out loud; things are already fraught enough as it is.

"Come on in," Bucky says with a deeply put-upon sigh. He finally backs out of the doorway enough for Steve and his suitcase to make their way in. As he turns, Steve catches sight of the broad expanse of his muscular back, and lets out a breathless, unstoppable, " _fuck_ ," that he could no more stop himself from saying then he could stop himself from breathing.

"What?" Bucky says. "Are you okay?"

"Stubbed my toe on my suitcase," Steve lies. Bucky turns back around and shrugs.

"Second bed and the dresser right there," he says and points to the bed with only a bare mattress on it, as if Steve couldn't have figured that out himself. Steve tosses his suitcase on it and pops the latches, resolutely not thinking about the mark equidistant between Bucky's shoulder blades: a red star, a little smaller than Steve's palm.

It's nearly a twin to the one on the inside of Steve's elbow, only that one's white instead of red.

It's fine—it's fine. Steve will just have to make sure that Bucky never sees the star on Steve's arm, and he'll have to be extra sure that those stars never touch.

Some people go their whole lives without ever meeting someone that they could soul bond to. It's just Steve's luck that the guy he could potentially bond with hates him.

*

For whatever reason, soul bonds aren't as common as they used to be. Or maybe it's just that people talk about them the way any fairy story gets talked about, told and retold and made into something bigger than perhaps it really is.

Steve's never doubted that they were real; his mother and his father had a soul bond, and while he never met his father—not that he remembers, anyway—the way his mother talked about Joseph Rogers, and the way she talked about their bond, Steve always knew that it was something precious and rare but also something, sometimes, uncomfortable and too much. A soul bond means that you can't really lie to your partner; they will always know what you are feeling, always know when you are happy or upset, and you can never smooth the way over and pretend if you're not really feeling something.

Joseph couldn't hide when he was sick from Sarah, not the way Sarah had been able to hide it from Steve when she fell ill.

Steve asked her, many times, about his father and about their soul bond, and she had told him the story again and again, indulging her grief as much as her son. She had told him about how they'd met at a dance, about how connected they had felt immediately, and about how, perhaps a month into their courtship, he had seen the tiny sparrow on the back of her calf, and shown her the corresponding sparrow on his ankle bone, right where the bone pressed against the skin. They had known immediately, Sarah Rogers told her only son, that they wanted that soul bond, but they have waited, out of respect for her family and his, and to make sure that they were as certain as they felt about their feelings.

But they had been, and after three more months, they had pressed their soul marks together and bonded with each other. Sarah said that when the bond activated, she felt the love that Joseph felt for her flood through her and she knew that his heart was every bit as big as she had thought—every bit as big as her own—and they had sealed the bond with a kiss, to make it permanent.

Steve has always thought wistfully about the bond between his parents. He'd never quite thought that it was something he'd get to have, and now he knows that he was right. He doesn't get to have it. Lots of people fall in love without a soul bond, and it's not like they love less deeply because they can't feel what the other person is feeling; but in all of Steve's half-baked daydreams, he never imagined finding someone else with his soul mark, and having that person hate him.

*

Steve gets his stuff put away. There's not that much of it yet, because he hasn't gone to retrieve his art supplies out of the storage lockers in the art building. 

There's going to be enough room, assuming whatever Bucky thinks he can wrangle out of the school office doesn't happen; this is a corner room on the top floor, and there's a window set into the slanted roof with just enough room for, say, an easel to be set up. There are built in bookshelves along one side of the wall, the side that leads to a little inset room that the closets are off of. Two desks are in there, back to back. The room where the desks are is just small enough that the housing department clearly decided it wasn't feasible to turn this room into a triple, but it does make it an unusually spacious double. Roommate aside, it's a great set up and once Steve is over the wobbly feeling in his chest from seeing that star on Bucky's back he's certain he's going to appreciate it.

Bucky himself is on the phone with the housing office, and Steve's not sure if he's talking to the same harried lady, or if it's just that every employee over there at the moment is feeling pretty tense, but the answers that he's getting seem short and snappish, and the frown line between his eyebrows is deepening the longer he talks. Finally he grits out a not very thankful sounding, "thanks," and tosses his phone on the bed.

Steve looks at him expectantly. 

"Welcome to 313, roommate," Bucky says unenthusiastically

Steve reaches deep within himself for some well of graciousness that Sarah Rogers would be proud of. "Thanks, Bucky. I know it's a hassle, and I appreciate it." 

Besides, how bad can it really be? Bucky's doing a theater concentration, and playing soccer, and he's probably in one of the school’s numerous (and stupid, in Steve's opinion) secret societies. He'll most likely be gone all the time and if he's not, Steve can use some of the studios in the art building and make himself scarce. It won't be anything like the warmth and friendship that he would've had rooming with Sam like he wanted, but it doesn't have to be awful. He's lived with strangers before—he and his freshman roommate hadn’t really clicked at all, but they'd managed to get along enough to last out the year without more than a couple of minor disagreements, and at this point in their school careers, he and Bucky have enough friends in common at least that he can't be _completely_ terrible all the time.

Bucky yanks open one of the drawers on his dresser and pulls out a t-shirt, and Steve is profoundly relieved when he pulls it down to cover that red star. Steve himself is wearing three quarter length sleeves today, out of sheer coincidence, and he thinks he'll have to do that consistently. He doesn't want to see the look on Bucky Barnes's face when Bucky sees that Steve has the same mark as him.

He'll just have to make sure that their marks never touch.

How hard can it be?

*

Sam's room—the room that Steve had hoped and thought and planned that they would be sharing—is on the second floor of Susquehanna. It's a nice, spacious double, although not as big as the room that Steve and Bucky will apparently be sharing, and Sam has ended up rooming with Thor, who is big and boisterous and easy-going, and Steve is glumly certain that they will get along just fine, and Sam will not suffer from not having Steve as a roommate.

Thor is also in the visual arts concentration, just like Steve, but whereas Steve is specializing in painting and digital art, Thor is a sculptor. His pieces are like him: big, well put together, and just a little unsettling, as though they were made by some well-meaning alien who doesn't quite have a handle on human culture. Not that Thor is an alien, but he spent his first twelve years somewhere Scandinavian before moving to New York, and somehow his perspective on things is always slightly different in a way that Steve admires

"Steven," Thor booms, smiling broadly at the sight of him. "I hope your summer was pleasurable."

Steve can't help the way his face falls a little bit, and Sam, who knows about his summer, quickly says, "It's good to see you, man!" and pulls him in for a back-thumping hug. 

Steve's not about to complain about his living situation, not with Thor right there, in large part because Thor didn't ask for this either, and Steve doesn't want to hurt his feelings. Sam and Steve have already talked about how pissed they both are at the housing office, but Thor himself is a genuinely nice person, so it's hardly the end of the world.

Sam gives Steve one final slap on the back and lets go of him. "So who'd they end up putting you with?"

Steve shrugs. "Bucky Barnes."

Sam winces a little, and Thor looks from Steve to Sam. "Is there some history there? I don't know Barnes well, but he seems to be reasonably congenial."

"I'm sure he is," Steve says awkwardly. "I'm sure it'll be fine. We had a run-in a few years ago, but..." He's not sure how to finish that sentence.

"Maybe it'll get easier if you get to know him better," Sam says gently.

Steve shrugs, not wanting to dwell on it any longer. "Are you guys hungry? I just got all my stuff moved in and I'm starving."

"I could definitely eat," Sam decides. "Thor? You coming?"

"I'm meeting up with Valkyrie a little later," Thor says. "Another time."

It's a pretty day, still early enough in the fall that it's not cold, but not quite summer-hot either. The sky is a particularly brilliant shade of blue, and the tops of some of the trees are just starting to turn yellow. The campus is full of people; it's a Friday, and school officially starts on Monday at the Rivers.

The Rivers is a boarding school that Steve would never have been able to afford but for Sarah Rogers's determination, excellent recommendations from his middle school art teacher, Dr. Erskine, and a truly magnificent need-based scholarship from a grant some poor kid who made it big fifty years back or so had set up for the school. But it's leveled him up as an artist in a way he couldn't have expected three years ago, and will open doors for him in terms of college and even his career once he leaves. He's grateful every day for the ways it's pushed him, and he was grateful over the summer as well, when he coped with his ma's illness by sketching his way through various doctor's visits and in recovery rooms.

He and Sam make their way through warm air with the promise of crispness to the campus dining hall, which is, frankly, uninspired but full of fat and salt at the best of times, and largely gross most of the rest of the time. There's a coffee shop where Steve prefers to spend his meal plan points most of the time, but it's not open yet since the semester hasn't officially started, so they're forced to avail themselves of the dining hall, which everyone can admit is a cafeteria, and get a lukewarm burger and some soggy fries.

Steve picks at it unenthusiastically. "So when did you get back?" he asks Sam.

"Yesterday," Sam says. "I thought—" He cuts a glance at Steve and Steve shrugs. He's not going to be over being sad about his living situation anytime soon, but he also finds he doesn't really want to talk to Sam about the whole soul mark thing. it's private, between him and...himself, he guesses, since he doesn't want to talk to Bucky about it.

"It'll be fine," Steve says, in the face of all the evidence, and then, in a valiant effort to change the subject, "Have you heard what the senior play is going to be?"

"Oh yeah," Sam says enthusiastically. "T'Challa's directing. I heard he's writing it too."

"Do you know what it's going to be?" 

"I heard it's going to be _Much Ado About Nothing._ But, like, a musical. And gay."

Steve leans back in his chair, so interested that he actually puts a limp french fry into his mouth, unthinking. “I wonder if they'll be doing an alternate setting." Painting sets is fun; Steve doesn't usually work on that kind of scale.

Sam shrugs. "It'll be fun to score a musical." 

Steve leans back in his chair. "Yeah. I’m just trying to figure out how we’ll make it a musical.”

"But you remember _Titus Androgynous_ from last year, right? The writing track can come up with some different takes for Shakespeare. And I trust T'Challa to do something interesting with it, if nothing else."

The senior play is always an effort from everyone in the class. Steve will most likely be working on set design, Sam, with his music concentration, will be playing either upright bass or cello in the pit. The thespians take center stage, ha, literally, but everyone in the senior class participates, in addition to their senior projects. The creative writing track comes up with something original or else adapts an already existing work, the music concentration scores it, fashion does the costumes, visual art makes the sets, etc etc. Steve's always really enjoyed watching it, and he's not quite ready to face that this year, they'll be making it. 

But they will, and he and Sam trade rumors about it—or anyway, Sam tells him rumors, because he just rolled up today, and Sam has been here nearly eighteen hours longer.

They're stealing each other's french fries, having finished the burgers, and reminiscing about last year's show when Sam looks up and stiffens a little, and it's so unlike Sam that Steve immediately knows something's wrong.

"Well, your roommate's here," Sam says, jamming the last bite of his bun into his mouth.

Steve’s not ready to face his roommate—or, he doesn’t actually care about facing his roommate, but he’s nervous around his potential bondmate. Sam slams a hand into his shoulder blades and Steve glares at him.

"Oh hey," says the voice of Bucky Fucking Barnes, and Steve tries to convey to Sam they he can kill him with his eyebrows if no other options prevent themselves. "I'm Steve's roommate. Bucky."

"Let me know if he's too much for you," Sam says like a traitor. "I'm sure we could find a place for him.

"Thanks, but that's not possible." Bucky shrugs. "I already asked the housing office, and they don't let people trade."

Steve's face is turning red, he can feel it, the telltale burn of heat prickling his skin, starting at his face and moving in ugly blotches down his chest, the kind of full body flush that can only be brought on by debilitating embarrassment spiced with a touch of anger, because _fuck you,_ Barnes. He knows it's not either of their ideal situation, but Bucky could at least act like he's not trying to get rid of Steve, like Steve's so unbearable to live with. Even Sam, who is generally one of the kindest and also most quickwitted and least tongue-tied people that Steve knows has to take a minute to scramble to find something to say to that. Steve glares at his asshole roommate, and maybe it's Steve's imagination, but after a second, Bucky's face seems to turn red too.

"I'm sure it won't be as bad as all that," Sam says awkwardly. Steve appreciates his trying, but it's easy for him to say—he's got an easy roommate.

Steve abruptly has zero appetite for the greasy remains of his french fries. He's got other things to do then sit here and be insulted by Bucky Barnes, he's sure of it, and once he gets away from this unfortunate and humiliating moment, he's sure he'll be able to think of them.

"I've got to go," Steve says, and picks up his tray. "I've got to get my art supplies. Catch you later, Sam." He nods at Bucky, but he can't force himself to say anything, because he's afraid of what will come out of his mouth. He stalks away, ears burning, cursing whatever stupid twist of fate made it so that he can't go on peacefully ignoring the existence of Bucky Barnes like he has for the past two years.

*

Bucky isn't used to feeling like an idiot and an asshole. He prides himself on the fact that he's pretty easy-going and gets along with almost everybody at the Rivers.

But there's something about Steve Rogers that's always rubbed him the wrong way, which is why it's so ridiculous that they're going to be roommates. He makes his excuses to Steve's friend—awkward, because Wilson at least is looking at him like he kicked a puppy, and the worst part of that is that he can't say he doesn't deserve it.

He gets a sandwich to go and walks out of the dining hall, feeling unbalanced. It's not exactly true to say that Rogers has always rubbed him the wrong way; it's really only since sophomore year. He'd spent freshman year admiring the slight blond from afar. Steve was so different from Bucky—he clearly didn't give a fuck what anyone thought. He had big, capable hands and bony wrists, slender forearms with delicate tattoos twining up them, even though he was just as underage as everyone else, and ought not to have been able to get tattooed until he was eighteen. He'd been gawky then, coltish, and he probably wasn't done growing, but he had filled out some; grown into his big hands.

Bucky—well, Bucky could get tattoos, if he wanted to, now that he's eighteen—but Bucky tries to think of his body as a blank canvas for his art, a vessel he can project whatever character he's acting onto for every play. He works out a lot to keep himself in the best shape (and because he enjoys it; he's always been active in sports as well as theater) and tries to pick up whatever skills he can, like dancing, or singing, or piano, or stage fencing, because you never know what might be useful on the stage. But as far as Bucky can tell, Steve does none of those things. He openly turns his nose up at some of the school's traditions, and as far as Bucky knew, he didn't put in the hours and hours that Bucky had into getting good—he seems to be just naturally gifted.

The point is that Bucky had found all of that intriguing—even attractive—until sophomore year. The stupid thing about it was that they had both been trying to do the same thing, protect an underclassman from a jackass upperclassman, but Bucky had had it under control and Rogers had just butted in. Teachers like Bucky—they always have—and he had been working it out in such a way that no one was going to get in trouble, but Rogers had popped off and gotten them both sent to detention. After three hours of Steve Rogers's self-righteous glare, Bucky had decided that no matter how cute he was, or how talented, or how much of a rule breaker, he was also a stuck up, self-righteous jerk that Bucky would do best to avoid. And up until now, that had worked just fine. But it was hard to avoid a guy when he was your roommate. Although, he hadn't done anything so far to antagonize Bucky, and Bucky had just been sort of a jerk to him.

Bucky sighs. The best course of action is probably just to be as polite and stay as far away from Steve Rogers as he could, inasmuch as that's possible given he's now living with him.

A knot of unhappiness catches in his throat. After last year's debacle, he'd been promised a single, and he isn't so much of a spoiled jackass that he thinks his wish to be alone was more important than someone else having a roof over their head for the year, but it's his senior year. Whatever chance he might've had for things to be better than the year before is fleeting. He won't have a chance for a do over for this year—after this, he'll be in college, unless he ends up taking some time off, a year to gain some work experience on a stage somewhere. It's not like his plans depend on having a room to himself, but God, he wants it.

He eyes the coffee shop. He'd much rather be eating there than taking his cafeteria sandwich elsewhere, but since it isn't open yet, beggars can't be choosers.

He walks away from the main quad, toward a little corner of the campus thick with trees surrounding a fountain. It's his favorite place to go to be alone on campus. He sits on the metal bench next to the fountain and unwraps his sandwich. He's hardly taken more than a couple of bites before someone plops down on the bench next to him. He doesn't even have to look up to know who it is; there are only so many people who can sneak up on him like that, and of those people, even fewer who'd just get up in his personal space like that.

"You look miserable," Natasha says.

"Hi, how are you? I'm doing well, thank you. I've heard some people like to preface their insults with a little small talk." He takes another bite of his sandwich, just to annoy her.

It doesn't work. "It's not an insult. It's an observation. I don't think you're doing well. You look miserable."

"Yeah, you said." He lets out an admittedly miserable sigh and tilts his head back on the bench. "I've got a roommate after all."

"What?" She sits up a little straighter next to him, and he can't help but smile a little bit. No matter what else is going on, Natasha always has his back, just the way that he always has hers. "But they promised," she says. After last year's fiasco, somehow he's comforted to know that he's not the only one that thinks this is a bunch of bullshit. Unfortunately for him, it doesn't change the facts of the matter, which are that Steve Rogers would be homeless unless he stayed with Bucky.

"Yeah," he says reluctantly. "It looks like there's been some kind of mixup over the summer. There was another senior who was supposed to have a room in Susquehanna, but didn't have a room at all, and the only place they could stick him was with me."

"So who is it?" Natasha leans closer and steals a chip out of the little bag that came with his sandwich.

"Steve Rogers," Bucky says reluctantly.

"Well that's not so bad," Natasha says reasonably, and then she says, "Oh."

"Yeah." Bucky sighs. "Oh."

Natasha's expression is serious. She doesn't let people see that often; she can hide more with a smile than most people can with a balaclava pulled over their faces. But she doesn't give Bucky fake smiles when they're alone, and he can't say how much he appreciates that; it means that when she lets him see that she's serious, he knows it would be best if he listened. "I know the two of you have some beef going back a couple of years," she says, "but he's a good guy. He's been through a lot the last couple of years."

Bucky snorts. He can't help it.

She hits his shoulder, more or less gently. "I didn't say you hadn't," she protests. "I just think the two of you might have more in common than you think you do, if you give him a chance."

"I'll give him a chance," Bucky says, although he thinks a little guiltily about more or less telling Steve and his friends how much he didn't want him to be his roommate less than an hour ago. "Besides, he's the one that stares daggers at me every time he sees me."

Natasha stares at him for a long moment. "You can fool yourself, James, but you can't fool me."

"I don't even know what that's supposed to mean," he says. This is only sort of true; he knows her well enough to know that she is telling him that he's full of it.

"Steve's very direct," she says thoughtfully. "If he's mad at you, you know it. You're not like that."

"I can be direct," Bucky says.

"Sure, you can be, but it's not your natural state. You don't confront the things you don't like, you just avoid them. Steve's kind of the opposite of that, really."

"When did you get to know Steve so well anyway?" Bucky asks.

"Last year," she says. "He designed the sets for _Swan Lake."_ Natasha is studying ballet. In Bucky's completely unbiased opinion, she is by far the best dance student that the school has to offer. Not only does she dance herself, she's studying choreography. Last year's _Swan Lake_ had been her directorial debut, and she had done all the choreography herself. She would have worked very closely with Steve on the sets, Bucky realized, and he couldn't quite explain the thrill of some undefinable emotion that chased down his spine. It couldn't be jealousy; he and Nat were best friends, but had never dated, and neither of them had ever particularly wanted to. They understood each other perfectly on some level that Bucky had never achieved with anyone else, and that was more than enough for both of them.

"So you think he's a nice guy," Bucky said slowly. There was nobody at the school whose opinion he trusted more than Natasha's.

"I never said he was a _nice_ guy—but he's definitely a good guy." She stole another potato chip out of his bag, and he pushed the bag closer to make it easier for her to get to them. "He's a bit of a crusader, I guess, but he's got reason to be."

"I don't even know what that means," Bucky grouses.

"Well, you'll have a lot of chances to find out," she says breezily. "He's your roommate—it's not like you'll be short on opportunities to talk to him."

Somehow this whole line of conversation is making Bucky feel uncomfortable in his skin in a way that he doesn't remember feeling since his voice changed. He'd been terrified that he would end up with a terrible voice, something unsuitable for the stage, and he'd felt out of control since his voice just did whatever it liked with no consideration for what he wanted it to do. The entire rush of puberty had been dreadful, with his body shooting up inches and packing on muscle and growing hair and popping inappropriate boners at every slight breeze, but to him, his voice had been the worst of it. And he feels on the edge of some similar precipice now, maybe because once again he has no control—this time, not over his body, but over his entire living situation. And after last year, that's the last thing he wants.

"I don't know," he says. "The whole thing makes me feel weird."

"Weird how?" she asks immediately, practically going on point like a hunting dog. "Weird like last year weird?"

"No, nothing like that." He folds the paper over the rest of his sandwich. He's not that hungry anymore. "Weird like, I was supposed to have a single weird. Weird like, how does my sudden roommate end up being the one guy that I have an uncomfortable history with in the whole school? Of the ones that are still here, anyway," he adds quickly. "It's just—you know those old stories about the school, right?"

"The school's not magic, James," she says gently. He doesn't try to tell her that he's never thought that the whole school was magical, but sometimes he wonders about their dorm. "It's all just a weird coincidence, and it's not even that weird of a coincidence. It's just not that big of a school."

"Maybe not," he says, "but I don't think the size of school has anything to do with who I'm rooming with. It feels like—" He breaks off. He can't even finish that sentence because he feels too stupid to say it. He shakes his head instead, unable to tell even his best friend that it feels like fate, somehow, even if he doesn't trust it.

But Natasha doesn't believe in fate, and Bucky knows that just because something's fated doesn't mean it's good.

"The school's not magic," she repeats. He takes a sip of his bottled water and shoves the empty bottle in the bag with his sandwich wrapper.

"I know," he says.

*

It's something they tell all the freshmen during orientation. Bucky and Steve's year, Headmaster Fury gave the talk himself.

"You will hear rumors," he had said. "You will hear stories. The thing about stories and rumors is that they give a little colorful flavor to your school experience, but what you must remember is that they are not true." He had stopped, his single eye roving over the crowd of students, taking in each face. Bucky would have been prepared to swear that his glare lingered on him longer than it did the other students, but it turned out later that everyone was prepared to swear that, so it must've been some trick of public speaking that Fury had mastered.

"The school," Headmaster Fury had said very deliberately, "is not magic."

The entire class of freshmen had looked to their neighbors, left and right, each with that expression of _is he fucking with us?_ But he seemed to be completely serious despite the ridiculousness of the claim. And then he had moved on to an entirely different topic, and had never mentioned magic, related to the school or not, ever again.

What none of the students could know was that which of the teachers was to give the annual talk about magic was a hotly-contested topic in the break room over the summer. Each of the teachers tried to get out of it, for reasons perhaps best left in the break room.

All the students knew was that if they tried to ask their teachers about it, their teachers became evasive. Squirrely, even. Not a one of them would answer a question straight. What this meant, Bucky had never been sure.

But he knows this much: magic is real, even if most people deny it these days. He's seen it, and he knows that it's not a joke, or a lie, or a story or a rumor, for that matter—no matter what Fury says.

It's because he believes so strongly in magic, that when he leaves Natasha at the fountain and starts walking back to Susquehanna, he pulls out his cell phone and calls his sister.

*


	2. in which Bucky invites his roommate to a party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky try to navigate being roommates, and Bucky invites Steve to a party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday! i know i said I'd be posting once a week but I got excited about this chapter when i was editing it, so here it is earlier asdkfhaskdfasdf
> 
> This chapter contains the non-consensual drug use tag. Please check the end notes if you want further details.

Steve is relieved that it's Monday. He's actually excited for his classes to start; it's senior year, and he's gotten all the basic requirements and core classes out of the way, so all that he's working on now are his art concentration requirements, and one lone remaining literature requirement, but that's creative writing, so how hard could it be? Other than that he's going to spend the whole year really focusing on his art, painting his ass off, and working on his senior project. His senior project will be a collection of pieces, the actual theme of which he has not yet determined, and it will be a capstone to his portfolio. He's excited to tackle it, and delighted to work with Ms. Hill, who really helped him refine a lot of pieces last year.

He spent most of the weekend pretty much avoiding his roommate. It wasn't hard; he had a lot of people to catch up with, his art supplies to get out of storage and set up in the studio he shares with several other visual arts students, and Bucky was busy doing whatever it was that he was doing—Steve's pretty sure soccer practice was involved, and he knows that aside from him, Bucky seems to have no shortage of people who like him and want to spend time with him. And now it's Monday, and classes have started, and that's going to make it all the easier to spend time away from room 313.

It's a bright spot in Steve's day that the coffee house is open now. It's his favorite place to go hang out; the vibe is relaxed and low-key, meal plan points spend just as well there as they do in the cafeteria but the food is much, much better, and the student workers who run the place never care if Steve wants to spend a few hours working and/or doing the crossword puzzle there.

He gets in with a printout of his schedule and his planner (and a selection of multicolored pens and highlighters, because how else is he supposed to get organized?) and a copy of the school paper, most useful for the student comic strips and the crossword puzzle.

"Hi, Wanda," Steve says as he comes to the counter. The glass display case is full of pastries and biscuits and sandwiches. "Can I get a coffee and a honey banana sandwich, please?"

"Sure, Steve." Wanda smiles at him as she pulls the sandwich from the case, and takes a squat, magenta coffee mug off the rack behind her. She starts pouring the coffee, and Steve takes a look around, doing a double take over the unfortunate graffiti on the opposite wall.

"Oh no," he says. "What happened?"

Wanda hands him his coffee, her usual friendly smile twisted into an irritated scowl. "Some assholes broke in over the summer. Can you believe it?"

Steve takes a closer look. He has nothing against well executed graffiti-style art, but this is not well executed, and there's not much artistry to it. This is just a series of badly drawn boobs and dicks, with some slightly more interesting snakes thrown in here and there, a repeated motif of six snakes spiraling out from a circle in the middle.

"Not much variation in the line, and a pedestrian choice of colors and subject matter," he says. "I'd give them a D, and the only reason it's not an F is because at least the snakes are kind of okay." Wanda laughs, as Steve hoped she would. She hands over his food, and he gives her his meal plan card to scan.

"I already texted the manager, and they're going to pick up some white paint later this afternoon. I guess the next couple of nights we'll be painting over it." She grimaces.

"You know what you could do," Steve says. "You could get somebody to paint over it, but like, a real mural. Not something like that—" He waves a hand at the unfortunate wall. "—but something with an actual design and color scheme."

"Ooooh," Wanda says. "I love that idea. I'll definitely bring it up with the manager. Can I give her your name?"

"What? Why?" Steve can feel that his eyebrows have jumped up, trying to colonize his forehead.

Wanda smiles, big and toothy. "I don't know, Steve, but it sounded to me like you were volunteering yourself."

"I've never painted a mural before," Steve protests. "I wouldn't have any idea what I was doing."

"Don't pass up an opportunity to stretch yourself," Wanda says. "You know, as an artist."

Steve laughs, working under the reasonable assumption that Wanda might forget about it, or her manager might not like the idea, or her manager might have a friend they'd rather have do it.

He takes his coffee and food and gets a table by the window, so he can look out over the campus. Susquehanna is a small, funky-looking building in the distance. He likes looking at it. Regardless of how awkward it might be this year, he's glad to live there. It sounds kind of corny, but there's no place he feels safer or happier on campus. It feels like he's lucky when he's there, like there's some benevolent force in the universe that's making sure that he's okay. It's nonsense, of course, but that doesn't stop him from feeling it.

The cafe starts to fill up as more students trickle in. Wanda's manager comes in with cans of white paint and a roller, and they promise the students who ask that the graffiti will be gone by the end of the week.

Steve digs into his schedule and his planner. The Rivers isn't like a traditional high school, exactly; the focus is on not only getting students a classical education, but preparing them for a life in their chosen field: in his case, the arts. For freshmen and sophomores, the schedule is broken up into hour-long periods, though not necessarily all back-to-back, but for juniors and seniors, there's a lot more flexibility, and Steve's classes are all in several hour blocks instead of changing on an hourly bell. He prefers it that way; it means he can really dig into his projects during his art classes.

It also means he has plenty of free time between blocks, so he doesn't feel bad about getting to his third refill of coffee, and picking up an apple cinnamon muffin after he's been there about an hour and a half. He's finished laying out his schedule and done some brainstorming about some potential themes for his senior art project, so he had time for unfolding the school paper, reading the comics section, and settling in with the crossword puzzle. He's only filled out the upper left corner when a shadow falls across the paper.

He looks up. Bucky is standing above him, backpack slung over one shoulder, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"Hey," he says, shifting his grip on his backpack strap. "Is this seat taken?" Steve looks around. While he's been off in his own mental world, the coffee shop has gotten much busier. Most of the tables are taken, and those few with extra chairs available looked to be mostly freshmen. He must be the only person that Bucky knows here, lucky him.

He summons up a smile from somewhere, though, and moves his stuff so that it's only taking up his half of the table. "Not at all," he says. "Take a seat."

Bucky slides into the chair, shifting his backpack to the floor next to their table. Steve can't help but notice that he also has the school paper tucked under his arm. Steve tugs the edges of his sleeves down. He's got tattoos crawling down his right forearm, but he can't pretend that his mark is a tattoo for more than a casual glance. It just doesn't look right. A mark is more luminous than any ink a tattoo artist has ever been able to manufacture, almost glowing under the skin; Steve hadn't thought for one second that the star on Bucky's back was anything other than a mark, and he knows he's not going to be able to pretend that his own is anything else.

He'll just have to do a lot of laundry until the weather gets cold enough for actual long sleeves, that's all.

"Thanks," Bucky says. He's not looking at Steve's arms, and why would he be? But if Steve keeps fucking with his sleeves, he might. Steve makes himself stop fidgeting, and crosses his arms on the table.

"Sure thing," Steve says, and the whole thing feels so desperately awkward, Steve can barely stand to make himself think of how they're going to get through a whole year of this. But then Bucky unfolds his crossword and spreads it out, setting his coffee down on the table, and they both start to do the crossword in silence, the chatter of other people's conversations and the scratching of their pens the only sound at the table.

"Ugh," Bucky says after perhaps ten minutes of more or less companionable silence. "I'm stuck on 23 down."

"Do you want a hint?" Steve looks down at his own paper, where he has already filled out 23 down. He looks up and catches Bucky watching him, a faint line between his eyebrows.

"Maybe just a little one," he concedes.

"What did you get for 15 across?" Steve asks.

"Attack," Bucky says, glancing down at his page.

"Well that's your problem," Steve says. "That's not right."

Bucky swears very quietly, and goes back to the clues, muttering to himself and jotting down alternate possibilities. After a few minutes, he makes a little  _ aha  _ sound, and starts writing with an air of furious vindication.

"Thanks," he says.

"Any time," Steve says. A few minutes later, he has to get up and start making his way to class, but he's not sad about it. This is the most pleasant time he's spent with his roommate yet, and he doesn't want to jinx it.

*

"Do you think my social circle is too limited?" Bucky is sitting upside down on the big squashy armchair in Natasha's room. This particular piece of furniture did not come with the dorm room, but has shown up in Natasha's room every year. He doesn't know what she does with it over the summer, but it's been a constant in his life since they were freshmen. It's an extremely overstuffed green corduroy and it is as comfortable as it is hideous. He has his feet in the air, his shoulders pressed against the seat, and his head dangling off the edge, long hair sweeping the floor.

"I'm not sure what you mean," Natasha says from her desk, where her laptop is open and she's making a moodboard, whether for a dance she has coming up, or just for fun, he's not sure. Natasha likes aesthetics, whether they're useful or not.

"I always seem to be in this armchair, is all." He shoots her what he hopes is a charming smile. It's hard to tell over all of the blood rushing to his head.

"I thought that was because you were avoiding your own room." She clicks on a picture of a woman with very dramatic smoky eyes draped in a veil and adds it to her board.

"I'm not avoiding my room," he protests, which is sort of true.

"Okay, fine. You're avoiding your roommate." She shoots him a look, green eyes as wry and incisive as always.

"Maybe a little." He swings himself back upright. As comfortable as upside-down is, he wants to be right-side up. The blood is running to his head and it's getting hard to think. "Nothing bad has happened yet, but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. And maybe nothing bad has happened because we've been keeping some distance between us." Both of them have, for their various reasons, Steve probably because he thinks Bucky's a dick, Bucky despite that his sister Becca had told him that she didn’t have any hinky feelings about his living arrangements, fearing something awful would happen.

"You should invite him to the Red Room party," she says decisively.

Bucky wonders if he hit his head somewhere along the way. "Didn't you hear what I just said about distance?" 

"Yeah," she says, "but it was stupid."

"I'm trying to maintain my personal boundaries so that neither of us hate each other and we can make it through to the end of the year without anything—" He swallows, throat suddenly drier than he'd like, even though he's not serious, even though he was just trying to joke about it. "...without hating each other," he finishes, even though it's redundant and not actually funny. 

"I know," she says, not quite gently, because she knows he can't stand it when she's gentle, but she doesn't call him on what he didn't say. "I know you think keeping distance would be better, but the more you get to know him, the more you'll get to see that he's not like them."

"I didn't say I thought he was," he says, because really, he doesn't. Steve might be a self-righteous jerk, but Bucky's never seen any sign that he's an actual asshole.

"Anyway," she says, "I want to see how you are together."

"Um," is all Bucky is able to contribute, because how they are together is mostly waiting until they can be apart again.

"I told you I think he's a good guy," she says, again with that not-gentleness. "Maybe I just want to be sure he's a good guy with you."

"Nat," Bucky protests, but secretly he's pleased. It feels good, her caring about him. His family cares, too, but they're far away and Nat's  _ here _ , looking out for him.

"Invite him," she says. "Give him a chance."

"I'll give him a chance if he gives me a chance," Bucky says, even though he's aware that that's not exactly how it works, that one of them has to give first. And anyway, since their encounter in the café, he'd say that their wary politeness has been more polite then wary. It can't hurt to ask the guy to the Red Room party.

The Red Room is one of the many, many "secret" societies that the Rivers school boasts. According to the supplemental materials in the brochures that potential students are sent, the secret societies are a charming on-campus tradition of social clubs that date back over one hundred years to the school's founding. Students make connections by being assigned to dorms, they make further connections and with the other students in their concentrations, but the societies are supposed to cross both dorm and concentration to form social links between students who otherwise would have no connection. If you ask the teachers or the guidance counselor, they would probably say something about forming as many social ties as possible to make sure no student is isolated. There's something to that, Bucky supposes, but in his experience, the societies are more of an excuse to throw parties, and to carry on dumb traditions that are sort of fun but have no discernible reason, or if they did ever, that reason is lost the sands of time or something.

For example, everyone knows that if you see a student aggressively avoiding the shadow of the Clocktower on the main quad, they are a member of the Hand. As members of the Red Room society, neither Bucky nor Natasha will ever actually wear an article of clothing that is completely red, although accents of red are approved of and in fact required on certain days of the year.

There are dozens—or maybe at least  _ a _ dozen—of secret societies at the school, each with their own ridiculous rituals, each with their own secret handshakes, and some of them are so discreet that they would never do anything as open as throw a party and invite people outside of their society, but the Red Room isn't like that. The lore of the Red Room, handed down from student to student over decades, is that it used to be a real secret society, the kind of place where students built connections and influence that would last a lifetime, where the parties that they threw were truly killer, and the initiates went on to do great things, sometimes awful things, too, in the pursuit of power and the secrets that lead to power. But that was a long time ago, and now it's mostly an excuse to get together, be mysterious, and throw parties with the alcohol that none of them are supposed to be able to get a hold of. It's not so secret that they don't invite other people, even though they're not technically supposed to let anyone know that they are members of the society. But it's an open secret, Bucky's found; members of the society never bring it up, and most students are not so gauche as to mention it even if all the decorations are, in fact red, and half the people there are giving each other dumb handshakes.

Steve's not in a society, not that Bucky knows about, but they are  _ secret  _ societies, and a lot of them keep their secrets better than the Red Room. Bucky amuses himself by trying to peg which of the societies that he knows about that Steve might belong to, but finds himself unable to really pick one. He knows for a fact he's not in the Red Room, and while he hasn't stepped in the Clocktower's shadow that Bucky's ever seen, the Hand are frankly kind of pretentious and he doesn't seem like a fit there, either. He might, Bucky supposes, be one of the Aesthetes, but one of their stupid rituals is all dressing like Pre-Raphaelites on May Day, and Bucky is certain, deeply, deeply certain, that he would have remembered if he had seen Steve dressed like that. Thinking too hard about why that might be makes him a little uncomfortable, though, so he quickly moves on.

It takes him a good day to make himself say it to Steve. Steve has proved himself to be a very low key roommate in the first week, or maybe it's just that both of them are trying so hard not to get in each other's way. Steve spends a lot of time at the art studio, although he's also set up a small foldable easel under the window, tucked out of the way most of the time. Bucky has yet to see him actually use it, and he can admit to himself if to no one else that he's very curious to see what his paintings look like. He  _ is  _ his roommate now, and besides...he just wants to see them, so sue him. 

He gets back from soccer practice on Thursday evening to see Steve hunched over a tablet on his bed, frowning at whatever it is he sees there. Steve looks up when he walks in and flashes him a tentative smile, tugging at his sleeves. Bucky has started to wonder if he has a truly obscene tattoo on his arm that he doesn't want anyone else to see or something, because he does that nearly every time Bucky walks into their room. 

"What are you working on?" Bucky says, because he's unaccountably nervous about asking Steve to a dumb party, even though he doesn't care if he actually goes or not.

"Trying to figure out my senior project," Steve says with a rueful smile.

"Already?" Bucky can feel his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. "It's the first week of school."

Steve sighs. "Yeah, but the project's ongoing all year, so I really need to get the main idea squared away as soon as possible." He frowns down at the tablet and then tosses it to the side.

Bucky slides a little further into the room so he can get to his dresser and start pulling out a stack of clothes to change into after his shower. He goes ahead and pulls off his sweaty shirt and tosses into the hamper in the corner of the room, and he senses more than sees Steve turn away politely even though it's just his back. But then again Steve never takes off even his shirt around Bucky. Bucky figures maybe he's self-conscious, and that makes him feel weirdly more aware of both of their bodies than seems normal. He's not body-conscious at all around, for example, his teammates, but now he's taken off his shirt and he feels weird about it.

He turns back around, and Steve is indeed angled a little away from him, staring down at his tablet again. Bucky bends down to pick up his shower caddy and towel, and then, once he's got all his stuff and a very plausible excuse to escape if this gets awkward, says, "Oh, I meant to mention—there's a party tomorrow night. Kind of a 'we made it through the first week alive' kind of thing. It's over in Allegheny." This is probably enough to let Steve know that it's a Red Room party; the basement at Allegheny is pretty well-known to be where the Room congregates.

Steve looks up from his tablet at this, takes in Bucky's bare chest, and snaps his gaze up to Bucky's face. Is it Bucky's imagination, or is he blushing? Bucky isn't sure why this gives him some undefinable feeling in his chest. "The party," Bucky prompts, because Steve is still giving him a wide-eyed look he can't interpret.

"Oh, yeah. Sure. I'd love to. Thanks." Steve holds the tablet up in front of him like a shield, and Bucky takes that as his cue to head down the hall to the shower.

Standing under the hot water, washing away the sweat and grime of the soccer field, he can admit that he's pleased that Steve said yes. Somewhere even deeper in the pit of his chest cavity, he can admit that he's looking forward to it.

*

Steve has no idea why he agreed to this. He's just lucky that right now, Bucky's in class and won't be home any time soon to witness Steve having a complete meltdown in their shared room. Steve has tried on and discarded, like, five shirts so far and none of them are  _ right. _

He tosses another shirt to the side, considers his skinny torso in the mirror again, gives up, and calls Sam.

"I don't know what to wear," Steve says as soon as Sam answers.

"Hello to you too," Sam says, sounding amused. "You're freaking out about this party?"

"I'm not freaking out about the party," Steve says, which is technically a lie. "I'm freaking out over what to wear to the party."

"Are you serious." Steve can hear the incredulity in Sam's voice. He squirms a little. He definitely deserves it. 

"Yes." Steve sighs and pushes his hair out of his face. It's a warm afternoon, and he's a little sweaty, even though he was clean and showered before he started trying on every shirt he owns. 

"So what's the problem?" Sam says. 

"It's a Red Room party." Steve sighs and holds up the blue polo shirt he just discarded to his thin chest. It looks too preppy, he decides, even with the tattoos down his arm showing. "I don't know if people dress casual or dress up or what."

"Why don't you ask your roommate?" Sam says. "He's the one who invited you."

"I could do that," Steve says, "but then he'd know that I'm anxious about it."

"So what?" Sam's voice gets muffled for a minute. Steve doesn't know who he's talking to, but he's aware that he's being completely ridiculous as well as taking up Sam's time. "It's fine to be nervous about it, and I'm sure he's been to parties before where he didn't know that many people either."

Steve finds a deep burgundy hoodie with three-quarters length sleeves and colorful stripes down the sleeves. Kind of festive, a little nicer than a t-shirt, but not too fancy. The fabric's pretty thin, so he won't be too hot—maybe a little warm at the moment, but once the sun goes down, it'll feel nice. He's already wearing the skinny jeans that make his ass look good, and the converse high-tops that he painted with old-school tattoo-style birds. He takes a breath. It'll be fine.

"Thanks, Sam. I'm aware I'm being ridiculous." It was just that here was something that he could worry about that was completely under his control. It was a stupid concern, maybe, the worry that he would look dumb and not fit in, but it was something that was one hundred percent up to him.

"Nah, Steve, don't worry about it." Sam's voice goes a little quieter, a little softer. Sam's the one person Steve had told everything about the summer, about Sarah Rogers's cancer, her treatment, her remission. His fears that he wouldn't be able to come back to the Rivers. His fears that he would, and that she would get sick again, and he wouldn't be there.

"I'll let you go," Steve says instead of talking about any of that.

"All right," Sam says, easy as usual. "Want to get coffee tomorrow? You can tell me how it went."

"Sounds like a plan. I'll text you."

Once they hang up, Steve crams all his discarded shirts back into his dresser, but doesn't put on his hoodie just yet. Instead, he stretches out his arms and looks at them.

His left arm is almost unmarked, smooth pale skin from his wrist to his shoulder, except for the white star in the crook of his elbow, luminous, almost glowing, flat to his skin. His right arm, however, is packed with color and lines, the designs marked in places with slightly raised scar tissue. They cover lines of marks from a series of IVs when he was younger, and no one had been sure whether he would need another surgery to correct the hole in his heart.

He'd gotten his first tattoo at sixteen—a heart surrounded by flowers and thorns—when the round of heart surgery that had left him with better health than he'd ever experienced in his life had been a success. He didn't have anything to cover the scar on his chest—yet—but he had drawn his first tattoo after that life-changing surgery, and Sarah had gone with him to give her permission for him to get it. They had never said this out loud, but Steve knew that part of the reason she had let him get it was because she had come so close to losing him, and at the time thought she still might, that she hadn't wanted to deny him such a simple pleasure as marking his own skin. He had turned eighteen over the summer, and didn't need her permission anymore, but he still showed her every design before he got it. He knows he doesn't need her approval, but her support means the world to him.

He rubs his fingers over the newest addition to his sleeve, a ring of daffodils, her favorite flower, on his bicep. He'd gotten it when the doctors had told them that her cancer was in remission. Maybe it was a little corny, but he felt like he was carrying a piece of her with him, regardless of where either one of them were physically. The daffodils are all healed, but bright and new still. He trails his fingers over his shoulder and down his chest, to the bright line of scarring there, raised much higher than any of the lines on his tattoos. It’s healed now, and after two years, he doesn’t suppose it’s going to get any smaller, though maybe it will fade with time. 

He hears the door knob turn and curses himself as an idiot, standing there with his shirt off and the door not even locked. He dives for the shirt on the bed and scrambles to pull it on, not sure in that moment if it's his soul mark or the ropy scar across his chest he wants Bucky to see less. It might be the scar; it's a visual admission of his medical history. He doesn't resent Bucky's good health, not exactly—it's just that he's been physically vulnerable his whole life in a way that someone like Bucky, with his soccer-player muscles and his smooth, unscarred skin can never understand.

His head pops through the shirt and he can see Bucky standing there with his key in his hand even though he didn't need it. Bucky's looking at him, but Steve can't tell if he saw anything or not. Steve tugs the hem of his shirt down self-consciously anyway.

"Is this shirt all right?" he asks, his mouth apparently decided to agree with Sam's advice even if his brain hadn't one hundred percent decided to yet. "For the party, I mean." 

Bucky gives him a once over, his eyes sweeping down Steve's torso, over his tight jeans, to his bright high tops. "Yeah." He clears his throat. "You look good. Want to grab something to eat and walk over together?"

What can Steve say to that but yes?

*

The party is the exact kind of thing that makes Steve uncomfortable: loud music, dim lights, lots of people he doesn't know well.

Dinner before the party had been surprisingly fun; he and Bucky hadn't had the kind of deep conversations that led to lifetime connections or anything, but it had been nice to shoot the shit on a more casual level. The more Bucky relaxed around him, the more Steve could see that he was funny and probably very likeable to anyone he turned his charm on.

But that had been dinner, and now he's at this party. They walked down the steps of Allegheny—one of the other dorms, bigger than Susquehanna. It houses more people and is a newer building.

The basement is big and spacious. They walk by a set of laundry rooms into a big, open space, much larger than the common room at Susquehanna, which doesn't have a basement, or anyway, not one that the students are supposed to access. This room has a low ceiling, and no windows, but it's been set up to look festive, and it largely succeeds. The walls are draped with twinkling lights, and there are tables with red vinyl cloths draped over them, with punch and cokes spread out. There are chips and dips, bowls full of pretzels, a pretty sad looking fruit and cheese tray, and some kind of meatball on a toothpick thing that Steve decides he's going to avoid.

There's a kitchenette off to the side, with a full-size refrigerator and an oven that Steve hopes no one is using. There are speakers set into the walls, pumping out danceable music, and a few people off the side actually dancing to it. Maybe there will be more dancers later. Steve decides he's not going to be one of them. 

Bucky introduces him to a few people and he reacquaints himself with Natasha, whom he worked with last year on  _ Swan Lake, _ and who he likes. She's wearing a black turtleneck with a red hourglass on it and she looks amazing, as always. She bends in and kisses Bucky on both cheeks and pulls him into what looks like a very enthusiastic hug. Maybe they're dating? Steve isn't sure how he feels about that, or even if he should feel any kind of way about it anyhow. Another good reason to keep the star on the crook of his elbow covered up, he supposes.

Now Natasha has pulled Bucky away to talk to someone Steve doesn't know, and he's nursing a coke that's already gone flat and thinking about bailing. It's pretty early, but he doesn't really have any compelling reason to stay. Bucky was nice enough to invite him, and he introduced him to some of his friends, and Steve has no reason to think that Bucky's going to want to babysit him all night. Bucky probably won't notice if he leaves—Steve doesn't see him at the moment, but he's clearly in his element here.

Steve goes to find a trash can for his coke. There's one in the kitchen, and a junior Steve vaguely recognizes as Peter something digging in the fridge.

"Want a beer?" the boy asks him. Quill, Steve thinks, pleased at his brain for dragging up the relevant memory. Peter Quill. There are at least five other Peters in the school that Steve knows of. Quill's hair is tousled and his cheeks are red, and Steve thinks he's probably already had a beer or two.

"No thanks," Steve says. "I don't drink." He chunks his empty can into the trash, where it lands with a satisfying thunking sound. 

"Then can I get you another coke?" Quill lifts a plastic jug, still mostly full, next to a stack of Solo cups.

"Sure," Steve says. "Thanks." He can drink it on the way home. He thinks he hears Bucky's voice and he turns, thinking he can say goodbye before he ducks out, but he doesn't see him.

Quill passes him the cup full of coke with a smile that seems a little close to a smirk, but maybe that's just his face. Steve takes a sip and wonders if this bottle was a little flat too as he crosses the crowded floor of the basement again, trying to keep an eye out for Bucky. It's hot and Steve has to protect his drink as he walks to keep it from spilling. Quill filled it awfully full, so Steve gulps the liquid down until there are a couple of inches between the coke and the rim of the glass as he walks.

He spots Thor leaning against the wall, talking to a thin, dark-haired boy that Steve vaguely recognizes as being in the theater concentration. Happy to see someone he knows, Steve makes his way over to them.

"Steve," Thor booms when he sees them. "Come meet Loki! He's telling me about the senior play."

_ "Possibly _ the senior play," Loki says. "Nothing's settled yet. I'm Loki."

"Steve," Steve says, and transfers his drink to his left hand so he can offer his right to shake. Loki's handshake is firm and his gaze incisive. Assessing.

"What's your concentration?" Loki asks.

"Visual arts," Steve says. "Painting, mostly. You're in theater, right? I've seen you in some plays."

Loki looks pleased at that. "Indeed."

"Maybe Steve and I will work on the sets together," Thor says. They've done so in the past; Thor rarely sculpts for a play, but he also knows his way around carpentry tools pretty well, so if there's something that needs building, and there almost always is, Thor can make it happen. Steve's never heard him sound quite so enthusiastic about it before, though.

They talk about the upcoming plays for the year. There's usually a play before Christmas as well as the senior play before graduation. Loki is fun to talk to, and Steve always enjoys hanging out with Thor. He forgets for a little while that he was on his way out, and just chats.

He's not sure when the feeling hits at first, but he starts tripping over his words and his face feels hot. He breaks off mid-sentence and lifts a hand to his cheek to see if it feels as warm from the outside. 

"Steve," Thor says, squinting at him. "Are you all right?"

"I'm not sure," Steve says. His tongue feels thick in his mouth.

"Are you drunk?" Loki says bluntly.

"I don't drink," Steve protests. "I can't. My medications—" And then he snaps his teeth shut on that, because that's not something he talks about except to a very few people, and neither Thor nor Loki are those people.

Loki takes the solo cup out of his hands and takes a swig, then frowns at the cup. "I'm afraid there's vodka in this."

Steve looks at the cup in Loki's hand, feeling betrayed by the world. Only not the world: Peter Quill, that stupid fuck. "Shit," he manages.

Thor grips his bicep. It's a friendly, comforting sort of touch, which is good, because Steve can't remember exactly what's going to happen. He seems to remember drowsiness, dizziness, and nausea being listed as results of an interaction, and maybe stuff like liver failure and death. He takes a deep breath. It doesn't help with the spinning in his head.

He doesn't know whether the best thing to do would be to lie down, or to try to throw up, or what. But he does know that he doesn't want to be at this party for even a minute longer. "Thor," he says, "can you call Sam? I think I need to go home."

"Come on," Loki says imperiously. "Let's get you upstairs, away from all this noise, and we can call your friend."

Steve lets Thor and Loki prop him up. They're both taller than him, which isn't that much of a trick because most people are, and ordinarily he would hate to lean on anyone like this, but he really does feel unsteady on his feet, and the steps that he walked down so easily a couple of hours ago seem like an almost insurmountable obstacle. He holds onto the railing and lets Loki walk on his left, Thor behind him ready to catch him if need be

"What's going on?" Steve raises his gaze from where it's been focused on his hand white knuckling the railing and sees Natasha looking down at him. She's frowning. That's fair; he feels like frowning too.

"Someone spiked Steve's drink," Thor says. "I'm going to get him upstairs and call his friend."

Natasha's frown deepens. "What the fuck," she says. "I'll get his roommate."

"You don't have to do that," Steve says, or mumbles, really. "He doesn't have to leave the party."

"Let me be the judge of that," she says.

Steve shrugs, because it doesn't seem worth it to try to argue with her. He lets Thor and Loki get him upstairs, into the actual common room of Allegheny, which is much, much calmer and quieter then the basement, despite a few students playing Mario Kart in a corner.

Thor gets him settled on one of the institutional gray couches that are the same in every dorm, and pulls out his phone, presumably to call Sam. Steve closes his eyes and lets his head tilt back onto the couch cushions. His head is swimming, dizzy and floaty-feeling. He doesn't like it; he likes feeling in control, and this is very much not that.

Loki sits next to him, and he's talking, but Steve can't really focus on what the words mean. It's just a stream of noise, and honestly, at the moment that's pretty soothing. It's something to focus on that's not the odd sensations in his head and stomach, but he doesn't have to answer, doesn't have to actually try and figure out what it means.

"Sam's not answering," Thor says, but it doesn't seem to be directed at Steve. Steve forces open his groggy eyes and sees that they have been joined by Natasha and Bucky, even though Steve told her not to get him. Steve closes his eyes and tries not to groan. Things have been going okay between them, and he doesn't really want Bucky to see him fucked up like this.

"Is he drunk?" Steve thinks he hears Bucky ask incredulously. "We haven't even been here two hours."

"Someone spiked his drink," Loki says crisply. "He said something about his medications."

Steve doesn't want to open his eyes. This is like something out of one of his nightmares, a bunch of people he barely knows talking about his personal details—medical stuff that he doesn't want anyone to know about, except Sam, who already knows it all, and his mom, who's been there with him every step of the way.

"Fuck," Bucky says in an entirely different tone of voice. "He wanted you to call Sam?"

"Yeah," Thor says. "But I can't reach him."

"Should we take him to a doctor?" Natasha says.

"No," Steve manages to slur. "I'll be fine. Want to go home."

"I'll take him back to our room," Bucky says.

"You should stay," Steve says, or thinks he says.

"I really don't mind," Thor says.

"Yeah, neither do I." Steve can hear the smile in Bucky's voice. "Besides, someone needs to keep an eye on him, and I live there too."

Steve sort of stupidly wants to protest, wants to say that he can get by on his own, but in this situation, he doesn't think he'd make it even to Allegheny's front door by himself, and he's not so stupid that he'll try.

The walk back to Susquehanna is not exactly fun. Thor comes with them, despite Bucky's insistence that he can handle getting Steve home just fine.

"I live with his best friend," Thor says, one meaty arm wrapped around Steve's shoulders. "I could not live with myself and would not want to explain to Sam if I did not see him delivered safely." At least Natasha and Loki stay at the party; Steve already feels like he's in a parade, and he can't imagine how embarrassing it would be with another two people trailing after them.

The night air isn't exactly brisk, but it is certainly cooler than it was inside Allegheny in the crowded basement, and it serves to wake Steve up just a little bit, for which he is grateful. Thor is mostly holding him up, Bucky at his other side. It's humiliating, but Steve supposes it could be worse. He's not sure  _ how  _ at the moment, but surely it could be.

They make it back to Susquehanna, and Bucky swipes his card over the lock at the door. "Thanks," Bucky says to Thor. "I really appreciate this."

"Of course," Thor says. "I'll have Sam call you when I see him," he says directly to Steve.

"Thanks," Steve manages. Thor takes his burly arm from around Steve's shoulders and Steve wobbles a little. Bucky quickly gets his arm around Steve's waist. It feels good, a solid support.

"You okay?" Bucky says softly. Steve nods, wishing it didn't make the world tremble around him.

"Good night, and good luck," Thor says, and then he leaves them. Bucky holds the door to the dorm open with his foot, and the two of them squish inside the open door together.

"I'm sorry," Steve says, because he feels guilty, even though he knows he didn't do anything wrong. It's not like he got messed up on purpose; Peter Quill was a dick and put vodka in his coke after he said not to, is all.

"You don't need to be," Bucky says. The arm around Steve's waist gives a little squeeze, and that—well, that's very nice also. It feels comforting. It feels like Steve has someone looking after him, which, technically, he does, even if it's only for the moment.

They make it to the stairwell, and Steve contemplates the expanse of stairs between where they are and where he wants to be with something approaching existential dread. Susquehanna is only accessible on the first floor; the building is old enough that it's been grandfathered into the ADA. What this means is that there's no elevator to the third floor and they have to take the steps.

"Okay," Bucky says. "We can do this. We've got it."

"Yes," Steve says uncertainly. Bucky might have it, but Steve personally does not.

"Here," Bucky says, "let me sling your arm over my shoulder, and we'll get up the steps that way."

He suits actions to words, ducking under Steve's arm, and Steve is too loose limbed and fuzzy to do anything but go where Bucky tells him to go, and he can't even remember why this is a bad idea, only knows he feels a vague foreboding.

They make their way up the stairs, Steve leaning on Bucky like a drunk, which he supposes he is, although it doesn't seem fair that he should have to experience the crappy parts without first getting the fun parts.

"I hate this," he says instead of imparting that observation to Bucky. "Don't like feeling all muddled like this."

"I'm sorry," Bucky says.

"Why?" Steve turns his head to look blearily at him. "You didn't do it."

"I know. But you wouldn't have even been at that stupid party except for me." He frowns. "Who did it? Was the punch spiked or what?"

"Quill," Steve says. "I told him I don't drink, but…" If he had to guess, he suspects that Quill just thought it would be funny, and didn't even think that there might be a reason that someone might not want to drink.

"That shithead." They've made it to the second floor. Steve wishes that they were in their room already, and didn't have just as many steps to go to get there. Bucky is looking grim and angry, and Steve is little flummoxed to realize that it's on his behalf. He squeezes Bucky's shoulder, what he can reach of it. He resets his arm higher over Bucky's back, vaguely aware that there's some reason he shouldn't have his hand on Bucky like this, if only he could remember what it is. Bucky is a warm, solid line against Steve's side, and it's nice. Probably too nice; things that feel good don't tend to last long in Steve's experience.

"It'll be okay," Steve says. "I'll sleep it off and it'll be fine."

"It won't be fine for him," Bucky says grimly.

That sounds a little too menacing for Steve's peace of mind. "What are you going to do to him?"

"Me? Nothing." Bucky shoots Steve a wolfish smile. "I'm going to tell Natasha that it was him who did it, and then he'll wish it was me he was dealing with."

Steve laughs, and then puts a hand to his head, because the movement makes him feel like he's spinning again.

"We're almost there, I promise," Bucky says. "Just a few more steps and then the hallway, and then you'll be fine."

"Thanks for taking care of me," Steve says. Even though that's the sentence in the whole world that he likes to say the least, at this moment, he means it. At this moment, he feels grateful. He tries to squeeze Bucky's shoulder again, in the spirit of gratitude, just as they're taking another step. But he slips, just a little, and his hand slides down Bucky's shoulder.

And then it happens.

Steve feels as though he's just touched a live wire. Something like electricity jolts through his body, only it doesn't hurt. It feels warm, and good, and like he's been wrapped in some kind of fluffy cloud made of belonging, of comfort, of love. It floods his entire body, from the tips of his hair down to his toenails, with the best, warmest feeling, as though he's getting a really good hug from the inside out, and for one eternal, floating moment, it's the best thing he's ever felt.

And then he comes back to his body, and remembers there was a reason why he shouldn't have had his arm slung over Bucky's back.

"What the fuck," Bucky says, and he trips too. Both of them stumble, falling up the last few stairs to the third floor landing. And here's what Steve will remember later: even shocked, even disoriented, even completely bamboozled by the sudden accidental activation of a soul bond, Bucky wraps his longer arms around Steve's slighter body and turns so that Steve falls on to him instead of the steps.

They both lie there for the space of a few breaths, panting, confused, staring into each other's eyes. Steve has somehow never noticed how bright Bucky's eyes are, a shade perfectly balanced between gray and blue. Bucky's arms are still wrapped around Steve's waist, and they feel warmer and stronger than they have any right to. Steve's hands are braced on Bucky's rib cage, and he's aware that it's inappropriate even while he's thinking how right it feels.

He's feeling something else too: a sense of shock and confusion that's not his own. That's what a soul bond is, even before it's sealed with a kiss; you can't read the mind of the person you're bonded to, but you can feel their emotions. Steve has a second to wonder what Bucky is feeling from him, and then Bucky says, eyes still wide and startled, "What just happened?"

Steve scrambles off of him and almost falls over. It's not fair, but he's still feeling godawful from the alcohol and his medications. "I think we just—I mean—" He gives up trying to explain and rolls up his left sleeve, exposing the white star at the bend of his elbow.

For a long moment, Bucky just stares, and Steve can feel his additional shock rolling through their bond. Bucky's hand slaps at his back, as though he could reach the star there. Then his eyes narrow, and he glares at Steve. "You knew." Steve flinches back, because it's true. He can't even think of prevaricating, much less lying, because Bucky would be able to feel immediately if he did.

"Yeah." He rubs a hand over his face. "I saw your back the day I moved in."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Bucky's voice is mostly even, but Steve can feel how angry he is.

"Bucky, you hate me," Steve whispers, more honest than he'd be if he were sober. "All I had to do was keep it to myself for the school year and then we could both move on with our lives."

Bucky goes silent, and Steve feels the anger in the bond abate some, replaced by something that's not quite guilt, but certainly related. He doesn't like that; it's too close to pity.

"Let's talk about this in the morning," Bucky says. "I can—I can tell how messed up you still feel right now."

"Okay," Steve says miserably.

Bucky stands up, then helps Steve to his feet. He wraps his arm around Steve's waist, and pulls Steve's arm back over his shoulder. There's no reason not to put it there anymore, but Steve is careful not to let their marks touch again. He doesn't know what that would do, if they would feel that overwhelming sense of well-being again or not, but he doesn't want to risk it when he doesn't know.

Steve leans against the wall as Bucky fumbles with his key and gets their room open. He feels terrible, and wishes he hadn't gone with Bucky, wishes that housing hadn't fucked up and that he was living with Sam. While he's at it, he wishes that his whole stupid summer had gone entirely differently, with Sarah in good health, and him thinking of nothing except his upcoming senior year. But as Sarah had told him often enough growing up, wishing didn't accomplish anything.

Bucky finally gets the door open, and helps Steve over to his bed. Steve is feeling far more fragile than he likes to feel, both physically and in his head, but Bucky doesn't say anything else. He gets him a glass of water and asks Steve to drink it, which Steve does. Steve doesn't even want to bother with brushing his teeth, no matter how gross he knows he'll feel in the morning. He fumbles with the laces of his shoes until Bucky drops to his knees in front of him and undoes them over Steve's mild protest. It's humiliating, but he doesn't really want to sleep in his shoes, so he lets Bucky do it, and then thanks him for it. He crawls under the covers and turns his back to the other side of the room, as if that could shut out everything that's happened tonight.

The room is spinning around him, and he shuts his eyes tightly, hoping that he won't get sick.

Before he can even think to worry about it too much, he's asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> non-consensual drug use: At a party, Peter Quill offers Steve a drink. Steve says he doesn't drink, and then Peter spikes his coke, and the interaction of the alcohol with Steve's medication makes him dizzy and disoriented.


	3. in which every night requires a morning after

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve and Bucky try to deal with their soul bond.

Bucky moves mechanically, walking to the bathroom to brush his teeth and get ready for bed, even though it's not that late. He takes Steve's empty glass and refills it at the sink, because he doesn't really know what to do in this situation, and this is at least a concrete, helpful action that he can take. He looks at himself in the bathroom mirror, the old glass warped and speckled with time and other people's toothpaste, but he doesn't look any different than he did before he had a soul bond thrust upon him.

Although that's not really what happened, and he knows it. It's just easier to be mad at Steve, because Steve  _ knew. _ Bucky knows, rationally, that Steve did not bond him on purpose. If he had had any doubts, what he had felt from Steve through the bond would have allayed them completely. Steve was just as surprised, just as upset as he was. It's not like Steve can lie to him now.

He looks over at the other bed. Steve started out curled up on his side, miserable, but he's uncurved a little in his sleep, his arm thrown back, his breathing deep. Bucky can see the perfect angle of his sharp jaw, just the tiniest sliver of his nose. Bucky should probably wait until later, but he doesn't; he walks over to Steve's bed and sets the glass of water on his bedside table, but that's just an excuse.

He looks at Steve's outflung arm, at the white star in the crook of his elbow where the skin is thin and vulnerable. It has that luminous quality, not quite a glow, that is the sign of a mark. It's hard to see in the dim light against Steve's pale skin, but it's there. He knows what his own mark looks like in the mirror, the flat red of it across his spine, its own not-quite-glow. He's not sure—he can't be sure, not yet—but he thinks the mark on Steve's arm is the exact same size as his own star. He feels an undeniable pull to touch Steve's mark, but he doesn't. It would be creepy to touch him while he's asleep, for one thing, and for another, the last thing he wants to do is to strengthen the bond between them, if that's even possible.

Bucky doesn't really know that much about soul bonds, beyond the kind of popular culture knowledge that everyone picks up from books and movies. His parents have had a happy marriage and four kids despite not having a soul bond. When he was young he'd thought it sounded romantic, the way surely everyone did when they were young, but as he got older, the level of the bond, the inability to ever hide anything from your partner had started to sound less romantic and more overbearing. He certainly never thought about having a soul bonded partner at eighteen. Before he even graduated high school!

Nope. No way. There has to be a way out of this. Steve is better than he'd thought at first, not as self-righteous, funnier than he'd suspected, nicer, but there's just no way he wants to be permanently bonded to a stranger before he turns twenty. Surely Steve can’t want that either.

After last year, he'd had enough of being stuck in situations with people he didn't choose, and that had just been his dipshit roommate for one year, not someone he barely knows for a lifetime.

He turns away from Steve resolutely and pulls up a cartoon on his phone, but in this episode, the Gems are confused by Steven's dad having a soul mark and he finds he doesn't really want to watch it. Instead he gets a documentary on space going, because at least stars don't bond, and is just settled in when his phone rings.

An actual phone call is rare and kind of annoying, but it's Natasha, so he answers it. "How's he doing?" she asks, and he doesn't know exactly how to answer.

"He's asleep," Bucky says in a murmur, looking at the other bed. Steve hasn't moved since the last time he checked. He knew he wouldn't have even before he looked. He can feel Steve's exhaustion, the depth of his sleep. He pulls a hoodie on over his t-shirt and tucks his key into his pocket, opens the door as quietly as possible, then slips out into the hallway. He feels a little bad about leaving him alone, for a moment, but it's not like he won't know if anything changes. He'd feel it, the way he can feel Steve in his chest, a faint shadow of that incredible moment when it had felt like there was a warm presence that would never let him go.

"James?" Natasha says in his ear. He can hear her breathing, the faint sound of her shoes hitting the ground. She must be walking home, or to her next thing, depending. Probably why she's calling instead of texting.

"I'm still here," he says. He opens his mouth to try and explain how insane his night's been since the last time he saw her, but he can't even think of how to start.

"I take it you weren't able to talk him into going to the doctor," she says dryly.

"No." He thinks of what he saw earlier today—and god, it feels like weeks ago, really—the huge scar across Steve's chest. No wonder Steve doesn't take his shirt off much; although that could also have been because he didn't want Bucky to see his mark. Whatever led to that scar on his chest and the medications that made it so he can't drink might well have caused him to not want to go to doctors at all. But he can't talk to Natasha about that, even though he can talk to her about anything. It's not his to tell. "He's okay. He doesn't need a doctor." 

"Are you sure?" She lets out a long breath. "Safer to go than not go."

"He didn't want to." He takes a breath of his own. "He doesn't need to. I can tell."

"Since when do you have a medical degree?"

"I don't. But what I do have as of an hour ago is a soul bond with him."

He has the previously unknown pleasure of hearing Natasha Romanova shocked into silence. It isn't as satisfying as he would have hoped. "A  _ what?" _

"A soul bond." It sounds just as unlikely as it feels. "He has a star on his elbow. I was helping him get up the stairs, and..." Natasha's seen his back. He doesn't have to spell it out.

"Oh, James," she says. "Are you all right?"

He wishes she were there with him for a moment, that she could fold him in her arms and tell him it's going to be okay, even if she'd be lying. "I'm not sure. I was mad—I'm still mad—but it isn't actually his fault."

"Then why are you mad?" she asks.

"He knew, and he didn't tell me." It sounds kind of petty when he says it like that, but if he had only known, he could have been more careful. If he had known, he could have—

He doesn't know what he could have done, but surely _ something. _

"Maybe he had a reason," she says slowly. He can't tell what she's really thinking, and once again he wishes she were here, because if he could see her face, he'd know. "Did you ask him?"

"Sort of." He shakes his head, even though she can't see it. There's a small common room on the third floor, close to the stairs, but he doesn't go there. The hallway has a hardwood floor and he paces as he talks, the boards smooth and slightly warped with age underneath the soles of his bare feet. "I don't know what to do," he admits.

"Well, there's nothing you  _ can  _ do at this moment in time." He hears her give a short, explosive sigh, muted over the phone. "Do you want me to come over?"

"No," he says. "It would feel weird for us to hang out while he sleeps."

"Fair," she says. "Well, it looks like my first research project for the year is sorted."

"What are you talking about?"

"If you think I'm not going to look up everything I can find out about soul bonds, you are sadly mistaken."

He laughs, relieved to find something to laugh about. Natasha is nothing if not methodical and thorough, traits that serve her well as a dancer and choreographer, and that will serve him even better if she turns her considerable energy to helping him sort this out. "Thanks, Nat."

"Of course." He hears the lock as her card opens the door, and he could go downstairs to see her, but he doesn't want to get that far away from Steve—it's not for anything to do with their bond, but because what if he leaves him and that's when Steve chokes on his own vomit or something? "Let's get coffee tomorrow, okay?" she says. "You can bring your soulmate."

"Oh God, Nat, don't call him that."

"Fine." He can hear the amusement in her voice, and he knows that once they have this figured out and enough distance that he can laugh about it she's going to give him a lot of shift. "You can bring your roommate."

"Let me talk to him about it first, okay?" He sighs. "He might have known about the marks, but he's just as blindsided by this as I am."

"I guess you'd know, huh."

"Yeah, I really do."

They're both quiet for a long moment. Bucky caves first. "I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"If you need me tonight, call me. I don't care what time."

He's warm inside, lucky to have her. "I will," he promises.

And then he goes back to his room. It's early, and he doesn't think he'll be able to fall asleep, but as soon as his head hits the pillow, he's gone.

*

Steve wakes up feeling only moderately shitty, and for five glorious seconds, he doesn't remember what happened, and he doesn't know why even though he's lying there in his bed, the only lasting aftereffects of the alcohol seeming to be a faint headache and an unsteady stomach, he feels a faint endorphin rush, like he's just worked out.

But then he remembers, because those aren't  _ his  _ endorphins—Bucky is the one working out. Steve groans and turns over to look, and of course Bucky is not in the room.

Steve slept late considering how early he went to bed last night—it's nine AM on a Saturday morning, and Bucky is out there running or something. He could be working through his emotions, Steve supposes, but when Steve tentatively tries to assess what he's feeling through their bond, he gets a feeling of intense focus, like Bucky is only thinking about whatever it is that he's doing right now. Which, that's one way to deal with it.

Steve finds his phone, which only has 8% battery left, and plugs it in. There are a series of texts from Sam asking why Thor called him, then saying that Thor got hold of him, then asking if Steve is okay and would he please get in touch as soon as he gets this? Steve sighs and texts him back.

_ I'm okay, crazy night last night _

_ Woke up fine, just a little dizzy and sick from the alcohol _

_ it got even weirder than that _

_ I'll tell you in person, text me when you wake up _

Then he sets his phone back down, and tries to sort out how he's feeling. For starters: Shitty. He didn't throw up last night but he certainly did sweat while he was sleeping, and falling asleep in his clothes doesn't leave him feeling any fresher. He digs through his dresser and finds his most worn, softest t-shirt, and a pair of comfortable joggers. He slides his feet into his shower sandals and picks up his caddy full of soap and shampoo and stuff. Twenty minutes later, hot water has blasted away at least the worst of his physical feelings, and done a pretty good number on his headache, too. His nausea can't decide whether it really wants to make him throw up, or if it's also competing with his feeling of hunger. He zips himself up in his favorite hoodie, the really soft one that says book nerd on the back, even though it's really too warm, and goes back to their room.

Bucky is waiting when he gets there, dressed in workout clothes and holding two coffees in his hands. He gives one to Steve, along with some sugar packets and a creamer.

"I couldn't remember how you take it," Bucky says. Steve feels exposed under his gaze, even though he's wrapped up in enough clothes that it should feel like armor or something.

"Thanks," Steve says. Then he takes a breath, braces himself, and says, "Do you want to go ahead and talk about it now?"

"I thought I'd take a shower first," Bucky says. He looks at Steve, top to bottom, really, and then adds, "I could feel it when you woke up."

Steve flinches. "Yeah. I could tell that you were working out, too."

Bucky runs a hand through his sweaty hair, and then grimaces at himself. "Man, this is gonna be so weird."

"I know," Steve says. He looks Bucky in the eyes. Bucky's gaze is unwavering, even though Steve can feel how uncertain he is about all of this. "My parents were soulmates. I have at least some idea about how this might go."

"Good," Bucky says. "I'm totally in the dark about all of this, and any insight you have is going to be welcome." He bites his lip. "I'm gonna take that shower now."

"Okay. Thanks for the coffee." Steve watches Bucky gather up all his shower stuff, and then leave the room.

Steve is far too distractible to actually do anything while Bucky's in the shower. He looks at twitter, he pokes at the drawing he's got going but doesn't actually do anything to it, and paces by the window.

Bucky comes back in, freshly showered and changed into clean clothes, and sits down on his bed, across the room from Steve. Steve sits on his own bed to face him. It seemed weirdly formal, but he guesses they both need a bit of distance to talk through this.

"I wanted to say again that I'm sorry," Steve says, and he really is. "I should've told you, no matter how awkward it was."

"I understand why you didn't," Bucky says, and Steve feels a little surprised, but he can feel the determination to be fair and to make this go as easily as it can coming off of Bucky. That's good; he feels the same way. They might be stuck in this ridiculous, stupid situation, but surely if they're both trying to make the best of it, it'll be okay. Right? "Neither one of us had the best impression of each other before this," Bucky says carefully, and Steve snorts a laugh, because that's for sure.

"There must be something that we might like about each other, though, considering." Steve summons up a smile.

Bucky gives him one back, and Steve can feel the relieved humor. "Why don't you tell me what you know about soulmates, then?"

"Well, I never met my dad. But the way my mom tells it, they met in the dance hall, and they really hit it off. Just a few months later, they decided to bond, and after they did, they sealed it with a kiss."

Even if Steve couldn't practically see Bucky's ears perk up, he feels him go on point like a hunting dog. "I thought that thing about sealing it with a kiss was just a story."

"No, it's true, or at least that's what my ma told me. We should definitely double check this, but the way she told me is that if you don't kiss to make it permanent, the bond unravels over time. I bet if it's not gone by the time we graduate, then when we go our separate ways, it'll dissolve with distance." Steve clasps his hands around each other. "All we have to do is not kiss each other, and we managed not to do that for three years, so I think it will be okay."

"I promise I'll keep my hands off of you," Bucky says dryly.

"I'm not worried about your hands," Steve says. "Just keep your lips to yourself and we'll be fine."

Bucky laughs. "Okay, we've got a plan of action—or I guess, a plan of inaction." He looks down, and then back up again. "I don't—I'm sorry you didn't feel like you could talk to me about this in the first place, okay? We didn't get off to the best start with this whole roommates thing, but...look, if we're going to be feeling each other's feelings, I'd like to at least try to be friends, if you want to."

"Yeah," Steve says. "I think it'd help."

"Like you said, we wouldn't have the same mark, if there wasn't something we could like about each other in there somewhere." Bucky smiles at him again, and Steve thinks he could get used to smiles like that. It's a bright smile, a happy to see you sort of smile, and Steve has never seen one of those on Bucky's face, not directed at him. "I'm meeting Natasha for coffee in about an hour, if you want to come with me." 

"I'd like that," Steve says. "Well, maybe. Um...about that."

"What about her?" Bucky lifts one eyebrow.

"I just—I don't want to presume, but you seemed really friendly last night. Is she your girlfriend? I don't want to make things even more awkward for you than I already have."

Bucky laughs, head thrown back. It's the hardest Steve has seen him laugh so far, and he kind of loves it. "Nat's not my girlfriend, don't worry about that. She's my best friend, but she's not going to fight you for my honor or whatever's going through your head about it."

"Well, good," Steve says seriously. "Because I'm pretty sure she'd win."

*

Natasha is waiting for them at the café when they get there. Steve goes to the counter to get coffee and pastries, but Bucky goes straight to Natasha and sits down.

"You got him to come with you," she says. "I'm so proud."

"He wanted to come," Bucky says. "Once I told him you weren't my girlfriend, anyway." Natasha laughs, and that's the sound that Bucky has loved since he met her.

"Come on," she says. "I can see where he might get that idea." So can Bucky, honestly. It isn't the first time that people have thought that he and Natasha were dating. It's just a side effect of them being so close.

"Did you find anything out?" Bucky looks around. The graffiti has been painted over, and the wall looks fresh, albeit a kind of boring white. Well, that probably won't last long.

"I did," Natasha pulls her phone out of her purse and taps the notes app. "But I'll wait to talk to you about it until he's back with your coffee. No need to say it twice, I guess."

"Makes sense," Bucky says. "As it turns out, his folks were soulmates, so he at least has a little bit of an idea of what to expect."

Natasha lifts one perfectly shaped eyebrow, but then Steve comes back with the coffees and pastries, probably more than the three of them will eat, but it's nice to have choices. And maybe Steve's nervous, it occurs to Bucky.

"Hi, Nat," Steve says.

"Hey, Steve." She smiles at him with one of her friendly, welcoming smiles, and just because it's a practiced, purposeful face doesn't mean she doesn't mean it.

"I guess Bucky filled you in on what's going on," he says uncomfortably.

"Yes," Natasha says crisply. "And first of all, I want you to know that Peter Quill is going to regret ever giving alcohol to anyone who didn't consent to it."

Steve's face is almost comical in his shock. "Oh…Thank you." A flush travels from his cheeks up to his ears and down his neck. Bucky absently wonders if it goes all the way down his chest. Anyway, he shouldn't be so shocked at people doing the bare minimum of coming down hard on someone who basically drugged him. It makes Bucky wonder what his life's been like, if he's so completely unused to anyone having his back.

"But anyway," Natasha says, tapping her phone. "I did a little research last night, and Bucky tells me that your parents were soulmates, as well."

"Yeah." Steve seems to flush perhaps a little darker. "I was telling Bucky—the bond isn't permanent unless we seal it with a kiss, so we just have to not kiss for the rest of the year, and with time and space, it will dissipate on its own."

"Interesting," Natasha says. "That's pretty much what the research I was able to find said, also. There really aren't as many studies on this kind of thing as you'd think. It's ridiculous that bonds like this aren't more understood."

"You're not wrong," Steve says wryly.

"I looked into the school policy on soul bonds as well, and all of their policies are written to encourage a bond," Natasha says. "There's a lot of stuff about allowing plenty of time together to strengthen the bond."

"There's nothing in there about an accidental bond?" Bucky says. "We can't be the first people this has happened to."

"I can't imagine that you are," Natasha says, "but that's not how the policy is written. The policy is written to encourage soulmates."

The three of them fall silent at that. There are plenty of people who think of a soul bond as a sacred thing, a mark of preordained grace bringing two people together, whether they believe in God, or destiny, or some combination of the above. The Rivers is a secular school, but Bucky knows that there are fundamentalist sects of nearly every religion that would force them to stay together. A weird shiver rolls down his spine at the thought.

"Well, we can do more research into that," Steve says. "Call the housing department, talk to some people who might know more about it than whatever the rulebook says."

"Without saying what happened," Natasha says urgently.

"Yeah, definitely," Steve says. "Hypothetical situations only in this house."

Wanda comes over to refill their cups, which ordinarily she, or anyone else working at the café, don't do. The bright smile she turns on Steve gives Bucky a hint as to why they might be getting this extra service. "Hi, Steve," Wanda says. Bucky is always so charmed by her accent, just the faintest hint of Eastern Europe veiling her words. "Good news, the manager approves your idea about the mural. Get us a couple of rough sketches, and she'll pick which one she wants you to paint."

Steve flushes bright red and leans forward. He still got on that hoodie, which Bucky can't deny it looks good on him. Bundled up like that, he looks smaller than he really is, not exactly frail, just more or less the perfect size to tuck under an arm—not that Bucky will be doing that anytime soon, so he tries to flush the thought from his mind. "It was just an idea. It doesn't need to be me who paints it."

"Yeah, well." Wanda shrugs. "Maybe I showed her some of your work."

Steve runs a hand over his face, still blushing, but Bucky thinks he sees a smile tugging at the corners of his lips, and he doesn't need to see that smile to know that Steve is deeply pleased. He can feel that pleasure thrumming through the bond between them. It's nice; it might be the happiest he's felt since this whole bond thing happened. Which makes sense—neither one of them is thrilled about the situation, after all, but it's always nice when someone recognizes your work, and whether it comes as easily to Steve as Bucky once thought or not, it's still work to make a thing come into the world.

"Okay. I'll get some sketches together. Any suggestions as to subject matter?"

"The sky's the limit as far as we're concerned." Wanda finishes refilling their coffees and heads back to the counter.

"Nice," Natasha says.

Steve ducks his head, his expression somewhere between happy and embarrassed. "It was just a thought—I can't believe they're really going with it."

"I'm sure you'll do a good job," Bucky says.

The look Steve shoots him is maybe a little skeptical. "I hope so," he says.

Somehow, Bucky doesn't think that he's wrong.

*

Bucky's phone rings on their way back to the dorm and when he sees it's Becca, he turns to Steve and says, "I've got to take this."

Steve looks at him, then nods. "I'll see you back at the dorm."

Bucky watches him go, then swipes to answer the call and says, "Becca. Hey."

"Hey, Bucky," she says. "I dreamed about you."

This is hardly an unusual thing for her to say; his whole life Becca has been pronouncing on the past, present, and future like she's got an inside line with fate. Bucky would scoff if someone else had told him about it, maybe, but the thing is, she's never wrong. In sixth grade when she told him to try out for the school play, he ended up finding his passion and, as it turned out, his best friend. When she told him to ask out Dolores Garcia, he got stood up and found out that he liked boys too when he ran into her brother at the dance he'd been supposed to take her to. When he was sixteen, she told him never to get in the car with Gregory Vernon, and that year, Greg wrecked his car and broke both legs. He had never gone wrong listening to Becca.

Last year, she had told him that no matter what he did, he should watch out for his roommate—get in a single if he could. He hadn't been able to swing it, and look how that had turned out. He needed her advice now, and he knew better than to ignore whatever she said.

It's why when people say the school might be magic, he's more inclined than most to listen with an open mind.

"What did you dream?" he asks her.

"I dreamed I saw your back," she says. "I dreamed I saw the star get so big it took up your whole back, and I dreamed it glowed so bright, I had to close my eyes."

"Well," he says. "You're remarkably on point, as usual. I met my—" He can't make himself say it. "I met someone with the same mark as me."

"Really?" He can hear the smile in her voice. "What are they like?"

"You remember I was telling you about my roommate…" Because of course he had called her to tell her about his roommate situation. After last year, he'd had to know if she had seen anything that suggested Steve might be like Brock Rumlow. She had hummed, closed her eyes, concentrated or whatever it was she did, and said, "All I can see when I think about you and where you live is you standing next to someone glowing. Whatever that means, he's not going to hurt you, Bucky."

Now, she says, "oh," and then, _ "oh!" _

"You are now talking to the proud possessor of an accidental soul bond," he says, with far more levity than he feels.

"Accidental?" she says, her tone sharp.

"It's a long, dumb story," he says.

"So tell me," his sister commands, and he does.

She listens, and hums or asks questions at the appropriate points, and when he's done, she lets out a long, impressed breath. "Damn, Bucky."

"I  _ know," _ he says. "I don't really know what to do now."

"You're going to be fine," Becca says, her voice certain. 

"Do you, like,  _ know  _ that or are you just trying to reassure me?"

"Both," she says, and he can hear her smile. "He's not going to try to hurt you—it'd be like hurting himself." 

"I'm sure there's all manner of fun ways we could hurt each other accidentally."

"So try not to do that, dumbass." He laughs.

"Hey," he says, right before he was about to hang up. "Don't tell anyone else, all right? Especially mom and dad, all right?"

"Of course," she says, and she sounds affronted, just like he would if she felt like she had to invoke the sibling code.

"I know you wouldn't," he says. "I just had to say it."

They hang up, and he turns to walk back to Susquehanna and the roommate waiting there for him. He can feel him, a thread of connection between the two of them. It's not a bad feeling, not at all, and that's why he doesn't like it. He doesn't want to get used to it—doesn't want it to feel good.

But it's not Steve's fault, and he doesn't want to make him feel bad because of it.

He passes by the walkway to the quad and sees that someone has graffitied a circle full of snakes onto a lamppost, just like the ones in the cafe.

Something about the black paint looks oily to him, a drip gleaming where it dried thicker than the rest of the paint.

But he puts it out of his mind; he has much more immediate concerns to worry about.

*

"Holy shit," Sam says, taking a sip of his coffee and looking at Steve, his brow wrinkled in concern. "Are you okay?"

"I guess I will be," Steve says. "It's not like I have much other choice. We'll just have to deal with this whole soulmate thing however we can."

"What a night you had," Sam says, almost admiringly. "Between getting your drink spiked, and this thing with Barnes--"

"Tell me about it," Steve mutters. Honestly, it's depressing to think about just how much went wrong in the space of a couple of hours. But Steve's determinedly not thinking about that. He has enough on his plate, and it feels like a lot more with this whole soul bond thing. If he thinks about it, he can feel what Bucky is feeling, and he doesn't like that.

"And Quill, man." Sam shakes his head,

"You know, he always kind of came across like an asshole to me," Steve says. "I guess it's nice to know that my instincts were spot on with him."

"He shouldn't just get away with it," Sam says grimly.

"Yeah, but what am I gonna do?" Steve shrugs. "If I try to turn him in, everyone there might get in trouble for drinking."

Sam lifts an eyebrow, as if to say maybe if they don't keep a handle on the people serving the drinks, that's on them, but he doesn't press. Steve wants Peter to suffer some consequences, but he doesn't want to take down everyone that was there. "Besides, Bucky said Natasha was going to have a word with him."

"Well, I'd be scared." Sam takes another sip of his coffee, and then his eyes widen as he catches sight of something over Steve's shoulder. "Well, speak of the devil."

Steve turns and looks, and then has to suppress the immediate urge to take a swing because, oh hey, that's Peter Quill. Never has Steve wanted so badly to punch someone right in their weasel face.

Quill must sense it, because he immediately cringes back, hands coming up to protect his face, and says, "Oh hey, man, I just wanted to apologize about the other night."

"Yeah?" Steve says. "If you want to apologize, then you should apologize, not just talk about it." He knows he sounds hostile, and it doesn't bother him. It's how he feels, after all.

"I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have given you a drink when you said not to, and I'm now aware that there are a lot of reasons people might not want to imbibe." He shoots a glance over his shoulder, almost fretful, and Steve looks in that direction to see Natasha, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest, expression murderous.

"Well, don't do it again," Steve says. "The next person might not have as mild a reaction as I did."

"I still think you should turn him in," Sam says, voice icy in a way that Steve has almost never heard from him.

"Oh no, you don't need to worry about that," Quill says. "I mean, you can if you want to, but that's my next stop."

"Your next stop?" Steve kind of feels like he's entered in some alternate dimension where his problems just kind of solve themselves.

"Oh yeah," Quill says fervently. "I've got to tell Fury what I did." His eyes dart Natasha-ward again. "It's better than the alternative, believes me. Thanks for being cool, man. Sorry again."

He slinks off, and Natasha gives Steve a firm nod, then trails off after him.

"Well," Sam says, sounding as nonplussed as Steve feels.

Maybe this semester won't be that bad after all.


	4. in which both our heroes get embarrassed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve paints a mural; Bucky gets a part in the school play; Steve has a moment of jealousy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday! NOTE the updated tags! check out the endnotes for details, if desired.

**October**

Steve submits three sketches to Wanda to give to her manager. One is a spacescape, a galaxy full of planets and stars, with imaginary creatures flying through it—not just aliens and spaceships, but also dragons and flying octopi and nyan cats. 

His second sketch is a cityscape. The Rivers is outside the city, but Steve is from Brooklyn, so it's a Brooklyn street that he draws. He keeps it vague enough that it could be almost anywhere, but in his heart, he knows exactly where it is—right down the road from the apartment where he grew up. The third sketch would be extremely self-referential for a mural in a coffee shop—it's…a coffee shop, but abstract, shapes that could be people at tables, some others standing up, everything with rounded edges that suggest plates and coffee cups. Steve pictures that in his head in cool jewel tones, but the sketch is really black and white, although he does take markers and scribble a suggested palette along the edge of each sketch.

Steve would be happy to draw any of them, but Wanda and the manager pick the spacescape, and he thinks that one will be a lot of fun. He refines the sketch, laying out shapes and solidifying his lines, and then does a quick digital overlay of colors so that he can easily change it if they don't like it. Bucky is full of comments during the whole process, watching over Steve's shoulder, but for some reason, Steve doesn't find it as irritating as he usually does when people feel like they can be a peanut gallery while he's working. He supposes it helps that no matter how much Bucky teases, Steve can feel his admiration and the sincerity with which he wants to help. Steve can tell that he genuinely likes the stuff that Steve's making, and that's a shot of confidence that Steve didn't even know he wanted.

He doesn't know why it surprises him—he hasn't had someone to look at his work and tell him how good it is since he left home; after Sarah's cancer went into remission, she moved back to Maryland to be close to her sister. Steve is glad that she has that support network, and he still talks to her at least once a week, but he misses her, and it's not the same as having her close, and it's not the same as living with her, although he guessed this is just part of growing up. It doesn't mean he has to like it. But Bucky is by default on his side, even if he doesn't want to be, even if Steve can sometimes feel how mad he still is about it. Steve doesn't blame him; neither one of them wanted to be shackled to each other like this. It's not what either one of them would have chosen, even if it's much better than Steve, at least, had thought that it would be.

Steve still hasn't decided on the theme for his senior project, which is worrying, seeing as it's now October, but he does have until the end of the year, so there's no need to panic yet, or so he keeps telling himself. The mural is a nice distraction from his actual artwork that he's supposed to be doing, and there's really no reason he can't add it to his portfolio, anyway. He has a sitdown meeting with Wanda and her manager, and they go over the slight changes they want to make to his sketch, and then it's approved, and he can start painting.

He's never actually painted a mural before, but he's not going to let that stop him. The wall is freshly painted plain white, and he guesses if he were really dedicated, he could go get an entire palette full of wall paints or something, but what he's actually going to do is just paint over it with acrylics and spray paint, and then seal it and call it done.

He decides he doesn't want to get started until the weekend, because the only time he has to do it during the week is between classes, and he doesn't want to get paint splatter on his uniform.

Ugh, the uniform. He's not sure what's worse, Bucky Barnes in his school uniform, or Bucky Barnes in casual clothes. All the students are supposed to wear navy slacks and a button-down shirt with the school tie. There are cardigans and sweatshirts with the school crest on them for colder weather, and scarves in The Rivers' unfortunate blue and green plaid, and Steve has always felt like an enormous dork in his uniform, far too uptight and starched for who he really is.

Bucky, though; Bucky fills out a pair of dress slacks and a button-down shirt. Steve's tie always seems to be too short or too long or the knot looks weird immediately after he ties it, but Bucky's lies flat along his placket the way it's supposed to. With his dark hair swept back into a low ponytail, and his cardigan thrown over his shoulder, he looks like a model for some abominably attractive line of menswear.

Steve's not sure why they even _have_ a uniform at a school that largely focuses on the arts; he can't be the only one who's constantly afraid of getting his uniform messy. Even though he's gotten most of his uniforms used, he still doesn't want to have to replace any of his shirts—he can always think of something else he'd rather spend his limited funds on. At least there are smocks in the painting studio, even if he feels like an idiot with one on.

But he's not bringing a smock to the café, and he never thinks about stashing an old t-shirt or something there to change into, so waiting for the weekend it is.

On Saturday, when he wakes up, Bucky is already out, running, or practicing soccer (you'd think he'd be good at it by now), or lifting weights, or whatever it is that he does at such an ungodly hour.

Steve can feel a nice burst of secondhand athleticism wafting through their bond. He's not entirely opposed to working out, but every day and so early seems like overkill. After his heart surgery, Steve doesn't have full function of his heart anyway, so he'd never be able to go as hard as Bucky, but it's kind of nice to get the good feelings from it without having to actually go out and commit sport.

Steve collects his things—painter's tape, pencils, markers, paints, and his tablet—and sets out in his rattiest pair of painting jeans and a beaten up old t-shirt from Perkatory, his favorite bakery in Brooklyn. He gets to the cafe right as it's opening. Wanda isn't in today, but Nebula is. He doesn't know her as well, but they've always been at least distantly friendly as the two visibly tattooed kids at the school. She's got some amazing facial jewelry as well.

"Could I get a coffee and a—" He scans the pastry case. "—cinnamon apple muffin, please?"

"Are you working on the mural today?" Nebula asks as she plates his food. "Wanda mentioned you might be coming by." 

"Yeah, I thought I'd go ahead and get started." He looks up into the loft over the door to make sure the projector he checked out yesterday is still there, and it is—tucked in by the sound equipment they keep there for the musical performances they have there sometimes. 

"I'm going to set up the projector," he tells her. "Let me know if I get in your way."

"Saturday morning's not usually too busy," she says. "You'll know if you start getting in the way."

With that in mind, Steve plugs his tablet into the projector and adjusts the size and sharpness until he gets it how he likes it. While he's at it, he marks where the wheels are with tape in case it gets knocked out of place. Then he spreads out his stuff on a table close to the wall where he's working, takes a sip of his coffee, and dives in.

He works quickly but carefully, starting out with his pencils and roughing in the shapes. It's easy because he's already done all the work of figuring out placement and how everything's going to look, but he's nervous at first because this is so much bigger than he usually works, and the times he's painted sets for various performances, it was under the guidance of someone else who had a vision for everything was going to look, not all on him to make it look good.

He falls into a rhythm pretty quickly, marking the wall, his hand picking up the lines of the projection as he works, moving back to make sure he's got it right, coming up close again to make the next mark. He borrows a stepladder from Nebula to get to the higher parts of the projection, but even that becomes a barely-noticeable part of his flow. Every now and then he pauses to drink some coffee, noting absently when it's still over half-full but cold.

He's aware, too, of more people trickling in to the cafe. He hears a buzz of conversation rising up, but it's a slow build; like Nebula said, it's a Saturday, and most students are taking the opportunity to sleep in.

Steve reaches out to take a sip of his coffee and sputters when he picks it up and it's hot.

He looks around and sees Bucky standing next to him, feels amusement trickle down their bond.

"So how long have you been standing there?" Steve asks.

"Not too long," Bucky assures him. "Just long enough to notice your coffee was cold and watch you work a few minutes."

"Thanks for getting me another one," Steve says. He takes a sip. Now that he's not focused on the wall, he can feel the tension in his shoulders from working this way, so he takes a few seconds to roll them back and forth, trying to loosen the tension.

"You were so focused," Bucky murmurs, and Steve shoots him a look. A faint blush washes across his cheeks. "I could feel you working."

"Sorry if it was distracting," Steve says, and then _he_ blushes. He can't apologize for working! He's got lots to do this year, and he can't just not work, even if his focus feels distracting to Bucky. It's not like he's asking Bucky to not work out, even though he can feel that through the bond, too. Steve is working up a good head of steam for an argument that he's only having with himself and imaginary Bucky, when real Bucky chuckles.

"It's fine," he says. "In fact, I liked it."

"You did?" All of the indignation that Steve had been letting build up inside him deflates like air or from a pricked balloon.

"Well, yeah. It was kind of cool, you know? I wasn't in that intent state, but I could still feel it."

"Yeah, I kind of get the same thing when you exercise," Steve says. "Second hand endorphins."

"Wow, that hadn't even occurred to me," Bucky says. His face is a little red again.

"It's like you said, though, I like it. Feels nice, and I don't even have to work out."

They both look at each other for a long second, a strange understanding of their strange situation washing over both of them. Who else in the whole school can share a feeling like this?

"So what do you have to do next?" Bucky tilts his head towards the wall, and Steve gladly accepts moving the conversation onto less fraught ground.

"Now that I've got most of the pencil up, I'm going to go back in with the marker and darken the lines so I can see them once I start painting. I've never done a mural before, so I'm kind of winging this."

"It's going to be great," Bucky says confidently. He frowns at the wall, at the series of gray marks all over it, and at the black and white projection. "I thought you did this in color."

"Yeah, I did, but I figured it would be easier to trace without the color to distract me." Steve walks over to the projector and turns on the layer of color.

The lines on the wall suddenly take on depth and interest that they didn't have before. Bucky lets out a long, low whistle. "Holy shit, Steve, this is gonna look incredible."

Nebula leaves the counter, and crosses the coffee shop to stand next to them. "I agree, Steve. This is going to be amazing."

Steve shifts from foot to foot, sort of wishing the ground would open up beneath him. "Well, it's not finished yet," he mumbles.

Bucky gives him a nudge in the arm with his elbow. Steve glares at him; for someone so generously padded with muscles, he's got really sharp elbows. "Just say thank you," he advises. "That's the least awkward way to accept a compliment."

Steve rolls his eyes, but looks from Bucky to Nebula and says, "Thank you. I hope it looks as good when I'm done." Steve takes another sip of his coffee, as a probably useless effort to hide his continued blush. Nebula pats him tentatively on the shoulder and heads back to the counter, while Bucky smirks at him.

Steve turns the projection off. He doesn't need it for the next phase—once he goes over the pencils with the markers, he'll need to see if there's anything that he missed, any lines that don't connect, and with the projection filling them in, he won't be able to tell.

"I'm going to be here for a while," he tells Bucky.

"Are you going to start painting today?"

"Probably not," Steve says, assessing the size of what he has left to do. "I'm just gonna get the lines down, and then I'll start on the color tomorrow."

He expects Bucky to leave after that, but instead, Bucky gets a coffee, and settles in, keeping him company and talking a lot of nonsense as Steve works.

He tells Steve that the results for the auditions for the Christmas play are coming out this week, and that he's excited about it even though it is a completely ridiculous play.

"What is it?" Steve is filling in some of his pencil lines with his sharpie, paying much closer attention to line widths and variation than he did when he was just getting the shapes down.

"It's _Hair_. I don't know if you've ever heard of it?"

"I don't think that I have, no." Steve fills in the curve of the giant space octopus.

"It's a musical from the sixties about a bunch of hippies in the Vietnam War and stuff. I watched the movie—I can't tell you how completely fucking ridiculous it is."

Steve laughs. "In that case, I can't wait to see you being completely ridiculous and it."

He feels a rush of embarrassment through their bond, much stronger than he would expect for someone who regularly gets up on stage to perform.

"I'm just kidding," Steve says capping the sharpie so he can turn to look at Bucky. "I'm sure you'll be great in it."

"How would you even know?" Bucky raises an eyebrow.

"We _have_ gone to school together for three years," Steve says, "and I have seen every school play in those three years."

"And you paid attention to me." Bucky sounds skeptical.

"We didn't have to be roommates or—" Steve snaps his teeth shut on the word _soulmates_. "Anyway, I didn't have to know you to know that you're talented."

Bucky seems to be at a complete loss for words, mouth parting to speak and then closing again.

"I'm told you just say thank you when someone gives you a compliment," Steve says. "That's supposed to be the least awkward."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a smart ass," Bucky complains, but Steve is in a position to know that he doesn't really mean it. He smiles, and Steve can feel that he's pleased.

Bucky hangs out for nearly an hour, keeping Steve company, and their conversation doesn't interrupt the flow of Steve's concentration; he doesn't quite get into the same zone that he might if he were alone, but he gets a lot done and the time passes quickly with Bucky talking to him. Eventually, Bucky leaves, and Steve pops in his earbuds to finish up the rest of the markers.

By the time he inks the last lines, Nebula is gone, and an underclassman named Peter Parker, Steve thinks, has come in to finish the afternoon shift. Steve steps back to take in the linework on the wall, and smiles to himself. His shoulders are sore and his back is bothering him a little, but really, he's done a good job on this. He pulls out his phone and snaps a photo to show Sam. Bucky and Nebula are right—this is going to look good.

If Steve drinks any more coffee, he's going to jitter himself into pieces, but he gets a vegetarian burrito and a water to go, and carts the projector back to the art building.

It's been a productive day, and he finds that when he turns to head back to the dorm, he's humming a song, deeply content.

*

Bucky has been checking the notice board posted in the lobby of the theater building daily for the last week, waiting for the parts for the plate to be posted. Every day there's been a whole lot of nothing as he's waited for the director of this play, Carol Danvers, to just post the damn parts.

He's a senior; he doesn't really think that he'll be relegated to just a part in the chorus, but it's okay if he is. His ego is not so vast as to require a leading part in every play, and he doesn't want to assume anything, but he's worked with T'Challa before and he's probably got, if not a leading role, at least a very good part in the end-of-the-year senior play. So if he's just in the chorus for _Hair,_ he won't mind, even if a leading part would be nice.

By Friday afternoon, he's psyched himself up to the point where he's partially convinced he's not going to be in the play at all, or that Carol would have put him on lighting or something, so when he sees the assignment sheet and see that he's been cast in the part of Claude, one of the leading men, he hardly believes it for a moment, and then he feels a rush of elation that fills him up and makes him giddy.

He's so excited that he has his phone out to text Steve, before he realizes that no—he's going to call Nat. Natasha is his best friend, and she's the one who needs to hear this first.

Of course, that doesn't mean he can't tell Steve too.

He knows where Steve will be; classes are over, so Steve will be at the café, working on the mural, like he has been every day after class. Bucky hasn't seen the progress since yesterday, anyway, so it only makes sense to start walking that way as he texts Natasha to tell her the good news. She sends a very gratifying string of emojis and exclamation points, and that puts him in an even better mood.

When he gets to the café, Steve is waiting for him with an extremely frothy latte in his hand, a big smiley face drawn in the foam.

"What's this?" Bucky asks, a smile stretching his face.

"You got a part, right? It's a good one, isn't it?" Steve shoves the latte into his hands. Bucky takes a deep smell of it—it's pecan, his favorite. "You felt—ecstatic," Steve says more quietly, a smile on his face.

"Well, I _am_ ecstatic, so thank you." Bucky takes a deep sip of his latte. It's just as good as it smells. He takes a look at the progress on the mural. Steve has blocked out a lot of flat colors, and it looks great, although Bucky knows it'll look even better once he does whatever it is he plans to do next. "This looks good," he offers.

Steve smiles at him. He has a streak of purple on his cheek, and his fingertips are teal. Bucky wants badly to wipe that purple off his face. He's been wanting things like that more and more often, the more time he spends with Steve, and he doesn't know what to make of it. He doesn't know if it's just the natural consequence of getting to know someone who it turns out is actually very likable, or if somehow the bond between them is making him feel that way. He doesn't like the thought of that, so for now, he pushes it away. There will be plenty of time to worry about that when he's not brimming over with happiness because he's the lead.

It occurs to him he hasn't actually told Steve that yet. "I got one of the leads," he says.

"That's fantastic!" Steve beams at him, an absolutely happy grin that takes over his whole face. It's a good expression on him. 

"We'll see if you're still saying that after the fifteenth time you've helped me run lines," Bucky tells him. It's only once the words are out of his mouth that he realizes how presumptuous that is. "I mean—if you'll help me run lines."

"I'll be happy to," Steve says, "as long as all I have to do is read them. I'm not much of an actor."

"You don't have to be," Bucky says. "You'd be doing me a huge favor." He can't quite handle the way that Steve's looking at him, and he's not sure why.

Steve smiles, and the paint on his face creases. The urge to touch his face is completely unbearable, and Bucky needs to keep his distance, not get closer to him.

"I'll see you back at home?" he asks.

"Yeah," Steve says.

Bucky takes his latte and leaves, watching Steve get back into the groove with his paints. He can already feel that focus humming through the bond between them, and it makes him smile, regardless of whatever thoughts he's having about keeping some distance between them.

*

Steve celebrates finishing the mural with a dinner out with Sam. He's been spending a lot of time working and with Bucky, and of course Sam's been busy too, so it's nice to spend some time together.

Steve got paid for the time spent painting the mural, if only in work-study hours, but still. It had been a fun technical challenge, and now that he no longer has the prospect of aching shoulders and a tweaked back in his future, he can concentrate on his schoolwork, he guesses.

At the last minute, Sam invites Thor along too, which Steve feels a little weird about, but it's not like he's going to say no. Thor seems like a very nice guy, and obviously Sam is getting to know him better this year. They decide to go to Sam and Steve's favorite sushi place, only a couple of blocks off campus and therefore easily walkable. Technically, seniors are allowed to have cars, but the paperwork and the expense ensure that Steve doesn't have one. Really, not too many seniors actually do. Generally speaking it's more of a hassle than a benefit.

It's a pleasant evening, cold but clear, and the three of them stroll the blocks between the school and the restaurant with the surety of seniors who are allowed to go off-campus, finally. Underclassmen and even juniors do not get that kind of privilege, and seniors only do with a signed note from their parents and if they maintain a certain grade point average. Steve keeps his grades up for his scholarship (and out of his natural sense of competitiveness,) so that's never been a problem for him.

They get seated and order, settling in with their cokes and tea, talking of not too much at first. Thor mentions Loki, the boy that Steve saw him talking with at the party that unfortunately kickstarted his bond with Bucky. Well, unfortunately might be too strong a word; Steve hates that they were forced into this thing, but he's been finding lately that he doesn't mind the thing itself. It's nice to know that his first impression of Bucky was so very off, if fate or whoever thinks they could spend their life together or whatever.

"What are you doing next weekend?" Sam asks as they dig into the seaweed salad.

"I dunno," Steve says. "I don't have anything planned just yet."

"Cool," Sam says. "I'm playing Friday night at the cafe. Want to come watch?"

Sam is in the music concentration, and Steve is not certain that there's an instrument that he can't play. There must be some—Steve has never seen him play the bagpipes, for example—but even instruments that he hasn't seen before, he seems to be able to pick up in a frighteningly quick fashion.

He can play most things with strings, and most wind instruments, but his favorite—or at least the one plays in his jazz cover band, the Trouble Men, is the saxophone. He was good at it when Steve met him, but three years and an intensive course of study later, he's great at it, and Steve loves to see him play.

"Absolutely, I'm in." Steve smiles at him.

"Excellent," Thor says. "I will be there as well. I have not yet had an opportunity to see Sam's band play."

“You'll love it," Steve says. "They're fantastic."

"Damn right, we're fantastic." Sam smiles. He's not even being cocky when he says that; it's true.

"Hey," Steve says, as the thought occurs to him, "are you in the band for the musical they're doing before Christmas?"

"Yeah," Sam says, "as a matter of fact, I am."

"Cool. Bucky got one of the leads." Steve tries not to beam like a proud parent when he says it, but it's hard not to when he remembers the surge of absolute elation that he felt through the soul bond when Bucky found out about the role. Steve doesn't know if he's ever felt quite that excited about anything in his entire life, but he thinks maybe when he got into The Rivers in the first place? Or when he found out about the financial aid? It's hard to say. All he knows is if he feels that strongly happy about something ever again, he'll know to treasure it.

"So how is Bucky anyway?" Sam says. "You know, you get a really doofy expression when you talk about him, wipe that off your face."

"I do not," Steve says indignantly. He's aware that strictly speaking that might not be what people call truthful.

"Are you interested in Bucky?" Thor asks bluntly. "Romantically, I mean."

Steve tries not to choke on a sip of his tea. "Um, not exactly." It's not entirely a lie—he doesn't want to have a romance with Bucky. He doesn't really know what he wants, but he knows it's not that. He's just very aware of him. It's not his fault.

Sam eyes him suspiciously across the table. Steve tries to beg him with his eyes not to say anything—the situation is weird and complicated enough as it is, and Steve would prefer the fewest number of people possible to know about it.

Sam is of the opinion that Steve and Bucky should talk to the school about it, possibly get moved into a different housing situation since they don't want to seal the bond, and living together the way they are can only strengthen it over time. 

Steve doesn't even disagree; however, when he tried to call the housing office and describe the situation couched in the most hypothetical of hypotheticals that he could summon, the man on the other end of the line had not been exactly helpful. In fact, he had talked about the potential bond in much the same terms that Natasha had described in the student handbook. Steve wasn't sure that it was worth it to even try, although Sam's position is that if he can find the right person and describe the situation, someone would be able to help them. Steve was hesitant because he knows what a pinch it was to even find them as roommates in the first place, and he wants to stay in Susquehanna, but he had filled out the paperwork for a request to transfer to another room in the same dorm.

"I put in a request for a transfer," Steve says. "My last call to the housing department, they told me it was being processed."

Sam shrugs, and Thor looks from Sam to Steve with the air of someone who can smell that there's more happening here than is being said out loud. And he's certainly not wrong; but Steve will neither confirm nor deny.

Like always when they go to the sushi restaurant, their eyes are bigger than their stomach. Although this is less the case than usual, because while Sam is a pretty big dude, Thor is hecking enormous, and he can put food away, as it turns out. By the time they're leaving, Steve feels like his jeans are too tight, but he regrets nothing. The walk back to campus serves to settle their stomachs, and Steve doesn't mind the way he can feel that he's getting closer to Bucky with every step. They cross back into campus by one of the entrances in the low stone walls that surround the rivers, and check in with the security guard.

They walk into Susquehanna together, Sam scanning his card to open the front door lock. Steve has been aware for the last few minutes as they walked of a prickling feeling under his skin. He says goodbye to Sam and Thor on the second floor, and keeps walking up to the third by himself. He feels…hot. He feels like his skin is just a little too tight. Sweat prickles on his forehead, and he can't figure out why; he shouldn't be breaking a sweat just walking up the steps.

He gets the third floor landing and a wave of heat washes through his body. He feels—he feels—

God dammit, he feels horny. But it's not even him—it's—

"Bucky," he breathes. Oh, God. Bucky knew he was out to dinner with Sam—what if he has someone over? He said he wasn't dating Natasha, but that doesn't mean that he's not dating _anyone._ Bucky is athletic and handsome, and from what Steve knows from school gossip over the last three years, he's dated his share of people at the school. The thought of walking into their room and finding Bucky with someone else makes Steve's stomach churn.

And then _that_ makes him feel terrible, because he really doesn't have any claim on Bucky. They might have a soul bond, but it was an accident, and Bucky has shown no sign of wanting it to mean anything else—neither of them have, he amends the mental statement quickly. Steve feels balanced on an edge of amusement and annoyance, because what is he supposed to do while Bucky is getting off with someone? He's got his phone in his jacket pocket, he guesses, but what he really wants is in the room. And it's not even his sketchbook or his laptop or anything rational; he just wants to burst in there and stake his claim or something. It's ridiculous and not how he wants himself to act, overall.

He decides that he's going to do the opposite of that: he's going to be an adult, he's going to be rational.

He sticks his head in the third-floor common room. It doesn't have a tv like the main common room on the first floor, but a few people are crowded around a laptop watching a movie. Steve doesn't really feel like socializing, not because he’s sulking—he's not!—but because he doesn't want to sit around feeling someone else's secondhand erection in front of the people he lives with.

Instead he goes to the stairwell. The third floor is, technically, the top floor of Susquehanna. To be more specific, it's the top floor of Susquehanna that's allowed to the student body. However, on the top of the landing is a small wooden door that's supposed to be locked at all times. And technically, it is. But some of the more enterprising students that live there—which is to say, Steve and Sam—had discovered early on in their tenure that the lock, which is original to the building, can be finessed open with nothing more than a bobby pin or other small, bent piece of metal. Steve is not in the habit of carrying a bobby pin around on his person, which is why he steps up on his tiptoes and runs his hand over the trim on top of the doorframe. It's dusty—it's been a long time since anyone has gone looking for anything up there—but Steve finds the bobby pins that he and Sam had tucked up there last year.

He jiggles the pin around in the lock until he hears the telltale click, and then pushes the door open. The attic of Susquehanna is a treasure trove. There are old, abandoned pieces of furniture lining the dusty wooden floorboards. There are battered steamer trunks full of abandoned theatrical costumes and costume jewelry. There are prop swords and papier-mâché statues, giant canvases painted by some student decades ago, moth-bitten velvet curtains, which Steve has no idea where they might possibly have hung, and the lightbulbs, dim as they are, are set in sconces that look like sailing ships. 

It's one of Steve's favorite places to go, with or without Sam, because it's magical. Even more magical, there's roof access that he's positive no student is supposed to know about. But tonight, he doesn't want to go to the roof, he just wants to sit on one of the dusty old couches and try not to breathe in too hard while he waits for Bucky and...whoever...to finish up.

It's an interesting position he's in right now. He's half sad and half horny, full of unwelcome melancholy over whoever is there with his... fine, his soulmate, and it's not that Steve is jealous, not exactly, but he would be lying if he said he was fine with it.

Some part of him thinks that Bucky is his in a way that he can't explain or be rational about. His head knows that any claim they have on each other is just an accident of biology, or however you want to think about it, but the rest of him can only think that _he_ should be there, that whoever Bucky is with; whoever is doing this for him, with him, they're not Steve.

The worst part is, he knows he shouldn't feel this way, but it doesn't stop the feelings, so here, alone, in this attic full of forgotten relics, he tilts his head back on the dusty couch, and just lets himself feel it. He lets himself wonder, just for a few moments, what it would be like if he and Bucky were for real, if they were thrown together by fate and the housing department and they leaned into it instead of waiting for it to fall apart. He lets himself wonder what it would be like to kiss Bucky. That sense of completeness, of being surrounded by love, that he'd felt when their marks touched—would that be what it was like the first time they kissed? Would their feelings be an almost physical presence when they sealed their bond? He was getting used to feeling Bucky in a corner of his mind—even now, when it was also annoying and borderline painful—how different would it be if their bond was real?

He lets himself think about it, really feel how amazing it could be, if it were real, lets himself imagine it, half-comforting, and half-salt in an open wound. It's not real. It's not going to work, and neither of them want it to. He just has to keep reminding himself of that.

Reminding himself of that, and ignoring the sensation washing through their bond, the crescendo of pleasure that's got him half-hard in his pants, shifting uncomfortably on the sofa. It's not—he doesn't want to—

Okay, fine. He _does_ want to touch himself, does want to indulge in the pleasure that Bucky is feeling, but he won't. He can't. It wouldn't be right, would be even more horribly awkward than whatever is happening now, and god knows that's awkward enough. What if Bucky felt some of what Steve was feeling, and they got stuck on some sort of unending boner loop—which, thank god, doesn't seem to be happening.

Steve doesn't seem to always feel when Bucky is horny, or at least he assumes Bucky has to have at least had a passing thought about sex now and then; god knows Steve does, but either Bucky is just thoughtfully keeping his mouth shut so as not to embarrass them both, or the feeling doesn't go through the bond unless it's intense. It's not like Steve notices every time Bucky has a passing mood; he mostly feels big, intense feelings—or physical sensations, like Bucky working out, or—

Or right now, as what Bucky's feeling, physically, is coming to the inevitable conclusion.

Steve bites his lip, tries not to let himself give in to the urge to touch himself. He doesn't really want to focus on his sad feelings about whoever's touching Bucky's dick either, alas, which leaves him in a bit of a bind, because it's suddenly really hard to think of anything else.

But Steve can't let himself think too much either about how needy he feels at the moment, or about how he seems to be questioning whether he really wants to get rid of the bond at all. That way lies—not madness, exactly, but that way lies the upset of everything that he and Bucky have agreed they're trying to do.

They said they were going to let the bond dissolve, and that's what they're going to do. It isn't fair to Bucky for Steve to start thinking about how he might like it to be different this early in the game. Not that it's a game! This early in the school year, anyway.

Steve bites his lip and lets his head fall back on the back of the couch again as an intense sensation of pleasure and release floods through the bond. Thankfully there's no one here to witness Steve's face, which he's certain is fire engine red, or his heart, beating too fast, or the surge of wistful melancholy which is not coming from the bond, but just him, and which he has to tamp down hard because the last thing in the world he wants is for Bucky to feel it.

He feels a little cold, a little desolate, but he makes himself open his eyes and sit up. There's a knitted blanket on the back of the couch that he hadn't noticed before, surprisingly much less dusty than the couch itself and everything else in the attic. He pulls it around himself gratefully, and it feels almost like an arm around his shoulder. Someone else besides him and Sam must've come up here, must have found this in one of the trunks, a little better preserved than many of the relics from students past that they have found.

He lets himself wallow for a little bit, warm and snug under the blanket, long enough for Bucky and whoever he's with to have stopped canoodling, or at least, like, done up their pants, probably. He makes himself put a brave face on; how he feels is not going to change anything about what's happened, or how he acts around Bucky—he's not going to let it.

He stands up and pats the blankets and murmurs, "Thank you." Then he immediately feels like an idiot, but luckily no one was around to see. He turns out the lights and heads back into the stairwell, listening as the door latches behind him. He plasters a fake smile onto his face as he walks into the hallway, and then thinks no—no, that's not right. Instead he smooths his face to what he hopes is a neutral expression, and walks to their room. He makes sure to make plenty of noise with his key so that Bucky and whoever he's with know that he's coming in, but when he walks into the room, Bucky is alone.

"Hey, Steve," Bucky says—in an overly casual tone of voice? Steve can't be certain, but is he blushing? The thought that Bucky feels like he has to hide whoever he was with from Steve makes Steve feel a little sad. This year is going to be exhausting if they're going to play those kinds of games.

"Hey, Bucky," Steve says.

"Is everything okay?" Bucky frowns at him, his eyes flicking around Steve's face as though he can find answers in his eyebrows or his nose.

"Yeah," Steve says, even though it's probably useless to try and hide anything. Steve's ma always told him that the bond was the worst when it wasn't the best—even if you weren't necessarily ready to talk about something, your soulmate can tell that there's something that needs to be talked about. She said that she and Joe Rogers had worked it out over the years—they'd gotten to the point where they could acknowledge that there was something they needed to talk about, but also acknowledge when they weren't ready to. It had made a big difference, she'd said. He and Bucky probably aren't there yet.

"Are you sure?" Bucky says.

When Steve thinks back on it later, the only explanation he has for what comes out of his mouth next is that the thought of explaining his feelings to Bucky is even more awkward than explaining why he stayed away from the room.

"I, uh, I thought you might have someone else over." He can feel himself blushing, although it's possible that maybe Bucky was over at the other person's room. But that would mean that they had basically gotten off and then split, and look, it's not Steve's place to be judgmental, but he would like to think that his soulmate is a more considerate lover than that. Not that it will ever be personally relevant! It's just that he wants to think better of him.

But maybe someone as good looking as Bucky doesn't have to be, he thinks gloomily. Maybe if you're that attractive and people are just throwing themselves at you all the time, you don't have to get good at making the other person feel good. Steve realizes he is staring at Bucky with his brows furrowed, probably looking kind of mad, since Steve is well aware that he has resting concerned face that can very easily veer into resting bitch face, and the silence has gone on awfully long, but he can never ever explain this particular train of thought to Bucky or to anyone else, and he has to say something, _anything_ but the thing he actually said, because now this long pause has gotten extremely awkward but the longer they stand here with Steve staring like an asshole, _the more awkward it's going to get._

Of course, Bucky is also staring back at him. "Why would you think that?" Bucky says, his voice pitched a little higher than usual.

"You know what? Never mind." Steve clears his throat. "I shouldn't have brought it up."

Bucky looks at him with what Steve believes to be burgeoning horror, his eyes going wide and his cheeks stained bright red. "Oh God, Steve—" Bucky breaks off and has to take a deep breath. "I, um. I've been by myself all evening," he says in a rush of words.

"Oh," Steve says. " _Oh."_ Now he too is blushing, his face at some incandescent level of heat that could probably cook things, like an egg on the sidewalk in August, or one of those dumbass cooking shows where they, like, make a grilled cheese sanwich on an engine block. Does this stupid bond mean they can't even masturbate by themselves without an unwilling onlooker? "Oh, fuck, now I feel like a voyeur. I'm sorry."

"No, I'm sorry," Bucky says, his hand up to cover his face. "I absolutely cannot believe this."

"Look, neither one of us meant for this to happen, and we're clearly both horrified by it, so…" Steve tries to think of a reasonable way to finish that sentence and just can't. They're going to have to figure something out because he doesn't believe that either of them is going to go the entire school year without jerking off. At the same time, the situation as it is is clearly untenable.

"Wait, why did you feel sad about that, though?" Bucky looks at him over his hand, his blue eyes sharp and suspicious. "Embarrassed, sure, I get that."

"Unrelated," Steve says firmly. He tries to focus on the feeling he got when Sam had shown up with Thor in tow at dinner, so that he's not lying, because Bucky will know. "A little worried I'm growing apart from Sam, nothing to do with you."

"I'm sure you and Sam are just fine," Bucky says. His cheeks still have a hectic flush to them, and Steve is certain that he is _also_ still red, and while Bucky may have accepted the reason he put forth for his moment of sadness, it's easy to tell that they are both still deeply embarrassed, not only because they're both blushing, but because Steve can feel Bucky's embarrassment surging through the bond, and he's certain that Bucky can feel his.

"It's just—a biological function," Steve says. "Everybody does it."

"You can't possibly say that when I can feel how embarrassed you are—how embarrassed we both are." Bucky's hand goes back over his face.

"Look, it's obviously…not ideal, but will figure out some way to deal with it." Now that Steve has said that, the only thing he can think of is that the only thing that makes sense is for both of them to just do it at the same time, but thank god he retains enough higher function to not say that out loud because, Jesus, it's bad enough that he's thinking it. If he said it out loud, Bucky would think, and rightfully so, that Steve is some kind of pervert.

Besides, Steve would be perving on Bucky in this hypothetical situation, because he's now seen Bucky shirtless many times, and Bucky is really hot, okay, and Steve, unfortunately, is bony and scrawny and scarred, so how would that be fair for anyone?

"I don't know how we're gonna deal with it," Bucky mutters.

"Yeah, me either," Steve says, "but I bet if we try to think about it sometime when we're both not personally deeply mortified by the fact of our existence, then I bet we’ll be able to come up with something."

Bucky cracks a smile at that, and Steve feels a little bit better about the whole dumb situation, not helped by the fact that one of the reasons he feels a little bit better about it is because Bucky was not, in fact, making out with someone else.

But Steve is not a complete idiot, and he is aware that he needs to brace himself for that situation, because it's coming. Bucky might not think it is, he might not be planning for it, but Steve doesn't see how he's going to avoid it, and there's no reason for Bucky to live like a monk just because he's been saddled with an unexpected, unwanted soul bond. Steve doesn't think that his dumb feelings are going away, so he's just going to have to work on making sure that they don't interfere with his and Bucky's tentative friendship, and that they certainly don't interfere with Bucky's romantic relationships or whatever. That wouldn't be fair. Although, as they change the subject, and Steve tries desperately to think of anything else, none of this feels very fair.

*

Bucky wakes up before Steve the next morning, as usual, and—unlike usual—he's relieved to be able to creep away while Steve's still asleep. Normally, he doesn't think about it with relief or regret or anything like that—it's just something that he does, gets ready to go for his morning workout with some of the other soccer players.

This morning though, after last night's debacle, which he hopes maybe someday he'll have enough distance from to laugh about, he isn't ready to talk to his...roommate. He glances over at the other bed as he changes out of his pajamas and into his workout clothes, a pair of comfy joggers over his soccer shorts, since the mornings are getting colder but once he starts moving, he might warm up enough to shed them, and a beat-up navy t-shirt with a sweatshirt pulled over it. Steve is still sleeping peacefully, left arm outstretched over his head, the star easily visible with his sleeve slid down his arm to the armpit. His face looks younger, relaxed like this, without the intense or fierce expressions that always animate him. Not that he'd been animated last night; he'd been hunched over and red with embarrassment.

But now he looks almost delicate, which is not a word that Bucky would ever use to describe him out loud, but's true: his features are sharp, high cheekbones, a strong jaw—even his outsized nose comes to an elegant point. And of course, sleeping, Bucky can't even see his blue eyes, which at different times he'd describe as "intense," or "sparkling," or "bright." What he can see now is the curve of Steve's bicep, the line of his ribcage beneath his t-shirt before the rest of his body disappears beneath the blankets on his bed.

Bucky makes himself face the other way as he sits on his own bed to tie his sneakers. None of this is anything he should be thinking about. He knows what he wants, and it's not to be bonded to a near-stranger at eighteen, no matter how enticing and warm that person might look at six forty-five in the morning.

He slips out of the room, his key, card, and phone clutched in his hand. He doesn't know one hundred percent what he's going to do after high school and he doesn't know even one half of a percent what _Steve's_ going to do. Bucky doesn't know if he wants to try to get more schooling or jump right out there to do whatever it is that painters and muralists do for gainful employment. But it doesn't matter, he reiterates to himself, because if he isn't certain of his own boundaries, how can Steve possibly be?

He's just confused because of the extremely humiliating sexual frustration he'd accidentally shared with Steve. He'd known that Steve would be out for the evening, and if he's honest, he had been kind of excited that Steve would be out for the evening. Living together and spending as much time together as they have been, it's been a while since Bucky could manage more than a quick jerk in the shower if the bathroom happened to be empty at the right time. But Steve had been gone, and Bucky had been horny, and he'd tried not to think of anything or anyone specific while he slid his hand down the front of his jeans, but he'd be lying if he tried to say that the vague figure in his daydreams hadn't resolved into Steve very quickly.

It makes sense, he supposes—no one's found a biological cause for soul bonds yet, but having someone that you understand, that you can't _help_ but understand, on such a deep, emotional level, who also happens to be more attractive every time you look at them—he just likes Steve a lot, okay? And somehow that has also segued into thinking about all the things he'd like to do with him. Sexually.

But he can't. 

It would be stupid for so many reasons—they’re roommates, and then there’s the question of the soul bond. Bucky wants him, but is it _because_ of the bond? And if he goes and gets himself bonded, then what about all his plans? He doesn't even know where Steve wants to go to college, or what he wants to do. Hell, he doesn't know what he himself wants to do—he doesn't know if he wants to go straight to college after he leaves the Rivers, doesn't know where he wants to end up. He's already started applying to colleges, but he might defer a year, depending on where he gets in and what he decides he wants to do. 

It's confusing, not being sure of what his next step is, and if he tries to add in a relationship, it will only be more confusing. Does he really want to try to do long distance, knowing that they're bound together forever if it gets hard, if it doesn't work out? Does he want to give himself one more reason to struggle? 

Maximoff waves from the soccer field, and Bucky tells himself to let it go for now. He's got too much on his plate to spend time worrying about things that can't be.

He jogs down to the green, and turns his mind to practice.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky masturbates, and Steve feels it through the soul bond, much to their mutual embarassment. 
> 
> MAYBE THEY'RE HAVING A FEELING OR TWO ALSO


	5. in which there are confessions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky explore the attic; Sam's band plays; ominous things! at the coffee house

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have a chapter a little early! some wild plot appears 👀
> 
> I have updated the tags! Please take a look--details are in the endnotes.
> 
> ALSO!!! omg [please take a look at this amazing mood board that theperspicaciouswaffle made!!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/possibleplatypus/644305746613387264) It's so pretty, I love it! 😭😭😭

Steve is running a little late, but that's not unusual. He's got to get to his portfolio review with Ms. Hill, the head of the art department. He's only had one class with her ever, and she intimidated the shit out of him at the time, but she got him to loosen up with his paintings, and he's looking forward to hearing whatever it is she has to say. Steve is all too aware that he has only made a halfhearted start on his college applications, largely because the financial aid applications feel so overwhelming. He's forced himself to bull through a couple, but he wants to cast his net wide. His grades are pretty good, and he thinks that having been at The Rivers at all is going to be helpful, but he could use a little more direction than he currently has.

"Hey, you gonna be around later?" Bucky asks, barreling into the room just as Steve is getting ready to leave it.

"Sure," Steve says. "I've got a meeting with Ms. Hill, but after that I'm free for a few hours before painting class."

Bucky has clearly just come from soccer practice or the gym or something. He's wearing running shorts that Steve would be freezing in—also, Steve's thighs would not look like that in running shorts—and a zipped up fleece jacket over a t-shirt. Steve himself is bundled up in jeans and a shirt, and a sweater, and a jacket, and he's got a scarf and a hat crammed into the pocket of his coat.

"Good." Bucky smiles at him, and Steve gets a tinge of secondhand excitement. Whatever Bucky's about to tell him, he's pleased about it. "Professor Okoye says that there are a bunch of old theater costumes tucked up in the attic up here. She asked if I could dig through them and see if we have anything appropriate for _Hair."_

"Oh yeah," Steve says. "Well, I don't know about that, but there are a bunch of trunks up there. Who knows what's in them."

"You’ve been up there?" Bucky's eyes light up, and he moves in like he's going to hug Steve, before visibly remembering either the bond that they're supposed to be not reinforcing or that he’s sweaty, and backing off a little bit.

"Yeah," Steve says, very careful not to let himself feel disappointed about any hugs that may or may not have been about to happen. "Supposedly Mr. Coulson has a key, but the lock's pretty old, and I've always been able to get in with a bobby pin."

"Absolutely stellar," Bucky pronounces. "Professor Okoye told me to ask Coulson, but if we don't have to, even better."

"Sure. I'll catch up with you after I talk to Ms. Hill." Steve grabs his tie, trying to fix the knot, which he never seems to be able to tie correctly. It's always coming undone, or one side is ridiculously longer than the other, and it's not exactly that he doesn't know how to tie a tie, it's just that he's not very good at it and doesn't see why he should bother.

"Here," Bucky says. "Let me fix that." He sidles up to Steve and tugs his tie loose, deftly re-knotting it. His fingers brush the skin of Steve's throat, and Steve tries not to shiver. This close, he can smell Bucky's shampoo, Bucky's laundry detergent, and also Bucky's sweat, which should be disgusting, but which in fact smells sort of salty and outdoorsy instead. Steve might be losing his actual mind.

"There you go," Bucky says, and if his voice seems a little rougher, a little deeper, Steve tells himself that he's imagining it.

"Thanks," he says, pretending that he too is completely unaffected by Bucky's proximity. "I'll catch up with you in a little bit."

He leaves Susquehanna, pulling on his hat as he steps out into the cold air, hearing the door click behind him. He is excited to help Bucky out later, but he tells himself to chill out about it; his excitement needs to be focused on whatever Ms. Hill wants to talk to him about. But he can't help it; he likes helping Bucky. He's been helping him run lines and learn the songs, and, yeah, the whole thing is a little bit dopey and extremely goofy, but what he likes about Bucky is that Bucky is throwing himself completely into it regardless. He doesn't seem to care that the lines are dated and silly and the songs are nothing but a bunch of hippie dippy baloney. Instead, he has embraced the ridiculousness enthusiastically. 

He can't wait to see the show. He's not helping with the set for this one—the first production of the year always features more work by younger students so that the older ones can focus more on their personal projects, and he knows he needs to work on his senior project.

He's been thinking about it, and while he's written down and sketched out a number of ideas, all of which he will discuss with Ms. Hill, the one that's really calling to him right now is a comics story. It'll be a stretch of his capabilities, that's for sure, and will definitely be getting him out of his comfort zone in terms of both storytelling and what he'd be drawing, but the challenge of it is exciting, and in practical terms, he thinks it'll be a good portfolio piece, because it'll showcase a lot of his strengths. He's more worried about stretching himself as a storyteller, because he knows that words are not his strong point, so he's considering doing the entire comic without any dialogue, or barely any, only illustrations and sound effects. The storytelling would be harder that way, really, but he's more confident in his narrative told through images than through words, so he thinks that's probably the way to do it.

The wind blows through him as he crosses to the quad, and he pulls his scarf tighter around his neck and walks faster, hoping that it will warm him up. The leaves are bright on many of the trees, oranges and golds, where they aren't already faded to brown or knocked off the bare branches. Pines a green so dark they're nearly black dot between the brighter trees, and the trail to the quad runs through them, flanked with a low stone wall that echoes the higher stone wall that rings the campus. The campus buildings are a mix of red brick and brown stone, the green of the quad faded to a yellow brown.

Steve skirts the edge of the quad, threading through other students going to class. There are three main class buildings flanking the quad, one for mathematics and sciences, one for language and media studies and history, and one for the arts. There is also the campus library, and beyond that, set off from the quad, the gym where Steve tries to spend as little time as possible.

Students move between buildings, getting to classes, or just getting breakfast or bugging their friends. Steve sees people he knows, but he just waves to them and ducks away, thinking longingly of a coffee from the coffeehouse, or even a cafeteria if he has to, but he doesn't have time.

The visual arts building had seemed huge to Steve when he first came to The Rivers, impressive just because there was so much room devoted to art. There are studios for all manner of creation: painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, puppetry, photography...anything that a student might wish to pursue. There are rooms for life drawing, rooms for still life, lecture halls, studios, and offices, where he's headed now. 

He slings his portfolio more steadily over his shoulder and tackles the stairs. The teachers' offices are on the third floor, and while there's an elevator, it's ancient and slow, and he doesn't want to be any later than he already is. Ms. Hill doesn't have the aura of someone who suffers fools gladly, so Steve's doing his best to not come across as a fool to her. 

He pulls up in front of her door, panting and a little overwarm. He pulls off his hat and scarf and stuffs them into his pocket before he knocks on her door.

"Come in," Ms. Hill calls from behind the door. Steve does, and she smiles at him while he takes off his portfolio and then his coat, hanging it on a gleaming brass rack by the door. She doesn't mention that he's a little late, and she seems more relaxed than she had been in her classroom—although one student is probably easier than a classroom, he guesses. By the time they exchange greetings and she offers him a cup of coffee, which he gratefully accepts, he's feeling much more comfortable with her.

They sit in the low, comfortable chairs and spread his proposals out on the table. There are three potential projects, and he'd be happy with any of them, but he really wants the comic. He doesn't say anything, though—not yet. He wants to get her first, unfiltered reaction, and see how well it aligns with his own.

Ms. Hill flips through his sketches, making low, appreciative sounds. Each one sends his stomach rolling. He very much wants to have her opinion, but honestly, he wants to _have had_ her opinion, not to have to go through the mortifying ordeal of _getting_ her opinion.

"It seems like you've put the most thought into this one," she says, tapping on the stack of loose sketches that contains his ideas for the comic.

"Yes," he admits. "I don't know if it's the most..." Prestigious. Important. Ambitious. Even though it is at least the last of those things. He doesn't know if it's the one that'll be taken the most seriously, he thinks, but he doesn't want to say that, even if secretly, in his heart, he wants to make something that means something to someone else besides himself.

Ms Hill turns to him, pushes her glasses up her nose with one finger, and looks at him frankly. "Steve," she says, "I want to help you make the thing you most want to make. That's the thing that's going to bring you the most creative satisfaction. We know that you can create to what's assigned to you, and you have the rest of your life to do things that are assigned to you. When you're given the chance to make what _you_ want, what will you do?"

Steve swallows hard. He doesn't know what to say to that; he's excited and apprehensive at once. "This is the one I really want to work on," he manages.

"Then that's the one you should choose," Ms. Hill says crisply. She closes his other proposals with a snap of his portfolio case. She starts to push it toward him, and then hesitates. "The coffee house," she says. 

Steve pauses in the act of packing up his work. "What about it?"

Ms Hill looks at him over her glasses.

Steve pauses in confusion. It's almost like she's waiting for a reaction from him, but he doesn't know what she's expecting "The mural," she says patiently. "You painted it, didn't you? If not, someone signed your name on it."

"Oh," Steve says. He can feel himself flushing, and takes a sip of his coffee in a most-likely futile attempt to hide it. "I mean, yes. I painted that."

"It's good," she says, and he doesn't know why he's so surprised. He thought it was good, but then again, he also thought it was just fun, a way to brighten the wall that had been covered with snake (and dick) graffiti. He'd never expected a teacher to notice it, much less compliment him on it.

"You should include it in your portfolio," she says. "In fact, based on your making it, I'm going to recommend you for an advanced class after the holidays."

"A mural class?" Steve feels a bit like an idiot asking it, but the mural was fun, but all he has to think about is the way his shoulders and back ached after he finished to realize that he doesn't really want to make a habit of it, much less a career.

"No, not for murals." She laughs. "Sorry, I'm not trying to be mysterious. Think of it as an advanced class for painting, that you've qualified for because of your color theory, and know that you'll find out more after the holiday break."

"But it's not color theory, is it?" he asks, because he doesn't think that he has a particularly advanced grasp of it.

Ms. Hill gives him a long stare, and he doesn't flinch away, even though he kind of wants to squirm. "No," she finally says. "It's not color theory." Unexpectedly, she smiles. "You're a talented young man, and quick, too. I'm excited to see what you come up with."

"Thank you," Steve says, a little confused, but certainly not displeased at the praise.

"I'll update your schedule for January," she tells him. "It should show up on the classroom app in a few weeks."

"Thanks, Ms. Hill," he tells her, and in a bit of a daze, he gathers up his portfolio and puts the proposals back in. She waves him out of her office with a smile, and he walks back to Susquehanna so lost in thought he hardly notices people talking to him, much less the by-now familiar snake graffiti scrawled on the lamppost by the cafeteria.

He walks back into the dorm still mulling over his senior project and the mysterious class that Ms. Hill brought up, and doesn't even recall that Bucky asked him to help him out until he walks into their room in a daze, and Bucky says, "Oh, hey! You're back. How was it?"

"It was...unexpected," Steve decides. "Apparently there's some advanced painting class she thinks I'd be a good fit for? It's not till January anyway, so I'm not worried about it yet."

"Pretty cool that she wants to put you in it, though," Bucky says.

"Yeah," Steve says, then gives himself a shake. "You said you wanted to go dig around in the attic?"

"I sure do," Bucky says, and then he does this _thing._ Steve's been trying to ignore the way Bucky's sprawled across his bed. In the time that Steve's been gone, Bucky's showered, and his hair is still damp, pulled back into a ponytail. Steve knows, because he's more observant in Bucky-related matters than he probably should be, that as Bucky's hair dries, it will fall out of that perfect tail and loose strands will curl around his face. It's a special kind of torment, because Steve always wants to push that loose hair back behind Bucky's ear, and he can't, but he's prepared to suffer if he must.

But the strands of hair are only the least of Steve's problems, because Bucky has been sprawled across the bed like some kind of languid odalisque or something, and now he contracts his abdomen and rockets off the bed, and the worst of it is that his shirt has ridden up a little while he was lying down and Steve can see a strip of skin between the waistband of his jeans and the hem of his shirt, wide enough that Steve could fit his whole hand there, not that he's thinking about that particular measurement, or any kind of measurement that involves fitting any part of his body against any part of Bucky's, and as Bucky takes his body from flat on the mattress to completely erect—no, Steve, don't think the word erect—as Bucky gets from flat on the mattress to _standing,_ the visible muscles contracts and Steve sees actual ab muscles, an entire six pack of them, if he's not mistaken which—what eighteen yeaar old has a fucking six pack? What kind of crunch-dedicated monster did fate think he was compatible with?

Although, it occurs to him, if fate was merely trying to hook up sexually compatible horny teenagers, fate was absolutely right on, at least where it came to him.

He has to turn toward the window to keep any of his deeply inappropriate thoughts from showing on his face.

"Okay," Steve says. "Let me put my stuff up, and let's go." He sets his portfolio down by his drawing table, his senior project notes to be pulled out later. He wants to tell Bucky about it, but he reins it in—that can wait until later. He sheds his coat and turns back around.

"All right," Steve says, grateful beyond words that Bucky's stomach is now covered by a shirt, thankfully. He can't be held responsible for what he thinks when he sees a sliver of Bucky belly. God forbid he should think it so hard that Bucky get a hint of it. That would be...uncomfortable, to say the least. Perhaps in the case of normal soulmates, it's not a bad thing that your partner know how hot you find them, but when your soulmate isn't actually your partner, but you are living together anyway...

Well. Sounds like a whole new world of awkward to Steve.

He leads the way up to the door on the third floor landing, Bucky following on his heels. Steve feels oddly self-conscious, even though he and Sam have been up here a billion times and it was fine. _Couldn't be anything to do with the company,_ he thinks, although that's not exactly fair either—he and Bucky are getting on a lot better than they used to.

In fact, that's the problem. The better they get along, the harder it is to remember the reasons why they shouldn't want to confirm the bond. And it's not like Steve doesn't know that they're awfully young for that kind of commitment, and that it would complicate both of their lives terribly...but on the other hand, in his life so far, he's nearly died several times, and just this summer watched his mother almost die, and even before all of that, had the tendency to just go hard for things he really wants. And he's starting to think that Bucky might be one of those things he really wants.

Not that it's germane at the moment.

Steve stretches up, sweeping the door jamb until his fingers find the bobby pin. He appreciates that Bucky doesn't try to help him, even though he's taller and could easily reach it. He just watches Steve as Steve retrieves it, and then raises an eyebrow as Steve picks the lock.

"Is that hard?" he asks.

"Not really," Steve tells him, listening for the telltale click of the tumblers turning over. It's an old lock, and it's not exactly difficult, but there's a bit of a trick to it. "I can show you how if you want." 

"Thanks," Bucky says. "I'll take you up on that."

"You just kind of have to rake it over the tumblers until it catches and then not let it slip out of place while it turns," Steve says with a laugh. 

"Can I try?" Bucky asks, and they spend several minutes with Bucky trying out his lockpicking skills, and Steve offering critique until he gets it. Bucky clicks through the lock several times, and he gives Steve such a bright and blinding smile that something in his chest clenches hard.

Hard enough that Bucky falters and looks at him. "Is everything okay?"

Steve makes himself smile back. It isn't hard. "Yeah," he says, and doesn't clarify. Bucky doesn't press

Steve feels warm with Bucky's accomplishment, and warm, too, in the hallway. Must be because heat rises, he thinks. There's no other reason he can think that right outside a third-floor attic would be warmer than the rest of the building. The fleeting thought that the atmosphere feels like approval, almost, like a warm, comforting blanket draped around their shoulders—that's pretty ridiculous. He tells himself not to anthropomorphize a building, and after Bucky's third time locking and unlocking the door with nothing but a bobby pin, they go into the attic. Bucky might have tried a few more times, just for fun, but the sounds of someone running up the stairs between the first and second floor are a timely prompt for them to go inside.

"Wow," Bucky breathes, as Steve flicks the light switch, and a warm, yellow glow lights the treasures before them.

It's not Steve's first time seeing all of this, but he remembers how it felt the first time he discovered it. The first thing about the attic is that there's one solitary overhead bulb, and it floods the surroundings with a white light, but it's not the only light source in the room. Sconces line where the straight walls meet the sloping roof, and these bulbs are older, and light everything with a golden glow. The sconces are shaped like sailboats, wrought iron that was painted a matte black decades ago. If ever there were lampshades, they're long since stolen, or discarded when they deteriorated too much.

The floor is hardwood, polished to a golden glow with decades of feet, so warm and homey that even a thick coating of dust can't completely dull its shine. There are old sofas and chairs, draped with white cloths to keep the dust from settling on them. Steve has spent many an hour with the dust sheets turned back to reveal heavy, worn fabric in dated patterns, talking with Sam. There are boxes and boxes along the walls, some of them cardboard made to hold documents, some of them old leather trunks with the leather flaking around engraved initials too tarnished to read. It's a treasure trove, Steve has always been certain, but he's never felt entitled to explore the contents of the boxes around them, or the cloth wardrobes lining the back corners. It's always been enough to feel welcomed in the warm embrace of furniture long since retired from the common room.

"This is incredible," Bucky says.

"Yeah," Steve says with a surge of proprietary pride that he has in no way earned.

"I don't know where we should even start," Bucky says.

Steve rubs his hand absently over the surgery scar on his chest. As soon as he notices he's doing it, he stops. It's an old habit. "Probably the wardrobes," he says. There's a dusty dormer window at the far end of the attic, with zipped-up cloth wardrobes lining the walls next to it. They make their way back through it, weaving through the furniture. There are six in all, three on each side of the window, and in unspoken agreement, they turn to the leftmost one and unzip it. Dust swirls in the air, turned into bright motes by the sunlight streaming in through the window, and Steve smothers a cough, sparing a moment's worry about his shitty lungs.

But that concern is quickly forgotten when Bucky pulls a costume off the rack and turns it so Steve can see. It's not the right time period—Steve's no expert, but he'd guess that this was for something Shakespearean, maybe. The fabrics are all rich colors and brocades, and though they smell a little musty, it's nothing that a careful cleaning won't fix, or maybe just an enthusiastic application of Febreeze.

"These are amazing," Bucky whispers. Steve slides up next to him, their arms jostling together as Steve pulls out another costume. It's similar to the first, but a long dress with a hat in a plastic bag carefully pinned to the hanger. Rifling through the entire rack, all the costumes are alike in vibe, if not from the same production, then from ones in the same general time period. They zip the wardrobe back up and move on to the next.

"Maybe we should label these, " Steve murmurs. "For future theater archeologists like ourselves."

"Did you bring paper and a pen?" Bucky shoots him a sly, laughing glance.

"No." Steve tugs at the zipper on the next wardrobe. "Guess we'll have to come back."

The next wardrobe is full of cowboy costumes and gingham dresses. Steve wonders if there was a production of _Oklahoma!_ or something.

In the third wardrobe, however, they hit the jackpot. As soon as they unzip it, Steve sees a fringed leather jacket, and a paisley print shirt. "This is it," he says. "This is exactly what you're looking for."

"Yes," Bucky breathes, and pulls out some bell bottom trousers. There are all manner of tie-dyed dresses, wide-legged jeans, long, empire-waisted dresses. There's enough there that Steve thinks they can probably outfit the entire cast, if that's what they want to do.

Bucky pulls the fringed jacket off of the rack and slings it on. _Oh no,_ Steve thinks. This is too much. The jacket fits him like it was made for him, and the light brown suede shouldn't complement his coloring so much, and yet it does. Bucky's hair is pulled back into a short ponytail, but Steve thinks that if he lets it down and parts it in the middle, it's going to look exactly right for a hippy who really doesn't want to go to Vietnam.

"You have to wear that one," Steve says. "I don't make the rules."

Bucky turns at the waist, twisting so that the long leather fringe whips around and hits Steve on the arm, slithering down his sweater sleeve. There's at least two layers between his skin and the leather, but he swears he can feel it like his skin was bare.

"Sorry," Bucky says, but he doesn't sound that sorry at all.

Steve glares at him, but it's half-hearted at best, and Bucky clearly knows it. "How are we supposed to get all of this over to the drama department?"

"I'm not sure." Bucky looks at the wardrobe, dropping down to one knee to lift the fabric corner and see if it's on wheels. It's not, of course. "I'll ask Professor Okoye. Or maybe we can get someone with a car to drive it over."

"I bet Sam and Thor would help us carry it," Steve thinks out loud. Even if they get someone with a car, they still have to get it from the attic to the ground floor. There's a little bit of an ulterior motive—he's been so busy that he hasn't seen Sam in a while, but also Sam and Thor are both big and muscular and will probably be able to do a lot more to shift all the clothes then Steve himself would.

"That's a good idea," Bucky says. He strokes the hands down the sleeve of his jacket possessively. "Until then, I guess it can just stay here." They zip the wardrobe back up. Bucky, Steve notices, does not take off the jacket, and he shows no signs of wanting to put it back.

"We should see what's in the other wardrobes," Steve suggests. "Just so we know."

They spend an enjoyable few minutes digging through the other wardrobes. They're organized by theme, like the first three, and one wardrobe has flapper dresses and double-breasted suits, another holds poodle skirts and leather jackets, and the last is full of what appears to be prop weaponry. Steve is delighted, and Bucky—Bucky is alight. He seems to want all of it, not just the leather jacket, and Steve is afraid that he, personally is completely, hopelessly charmed by Bucky's enthusiasm.

They close everything up again, and Steve peels back the dust cloth on a couch so they can both flop on it.

"This is incredible," Bucky says. "I can't believe I've never been up here before."

"I can't believe I never looked in any of the wardrobes," Steve marvels. "This was up here the whole time, and I had no idea."

"We should look through the chests, too, sometime," Bucky says.

Steve hum his agreement, looking around the attics. They've stirred up a lot of dust, and he suppresses a cough, his hand going to his chest again. "Could be anything in there," he agrees.

"Thank you for taking me up here," Bucky says. He angles his body on the couch so he can look at Steve. Steve doesn't want to think of himself as the kind of person who would just melt under a cute guy's serious look like that, but this isn't just any cute guy, is it? This is Bucky.

"I'm sorry I was such a jerk to you at first," Bucky says, out of nowhere.

Steve turns his head, surprised. He honestly hasn't thought about that in ages—two years of thinking that Bucky was an asshole were pretty quickly canceled out by two months of actually living with him, never mind the whole soulmate thing.

"I know it's tough when you think you're going to get a single," Steve offers instead. Bucky's face does a weird little scrunched up thing, and Steve finds himself asking, "Why were you so set on getting a single this year, anyway?"

Bucky sighs. He bites his lip, worrying it between his teeth, and Steve can almost visibly see him struggling with something—but even if he couldn't, he can feel that there's something there, something big and dark that Bucky doesn't really want to talk about.

"Don't—I mean, I was just curious. You don't have to—"

"Last year," Bucky says, staring down at his hands folded over his knees. "Last year, my roommate was Brock Rumlow."

"Didn't he get kicked out?" Steve searches his memory for any details that he might have heard surrounding that expulsion, but he can't pull any to the top of his mind. It was toward the end of last year, he remembers that much, but he'd been so worried about his mother and her diagnosis that he hadn't really paid much attention to what was happening on campus.

"Yeah, he got kicked out. Eventually." Bucky still won't look at Steve, but Steve feels a weight in Bucky's chest, like a dark cloud of emotion that he's been sitting on and sitting on. It's heavy, painfully so.

"What happened?" Steve asks. For a moment, he thinks Bucky won't answer him, but then Bucky takes a breath, steels himself, and says, "He was part of a secret society that was very heavily trying to recruit me, but I turned them down."

"Yeah, you're Red Room," Steve says automatically. Bucky lifts an eyebrow, and Steve adds, "I didn't think you were trying to keep it a secret."

Bucky clears his throat. "Well, yeah. They wanted me to leave Red Room and join Hydra."

Steve remembers that too—Hydra got kicked off campus, their charter dissolved. It had been enough of a scandal that it had penetrated the fog of frantic worry he'd been moving through. It was rare enough for a secret society to be exposed at all, and for it to be brought to light only to be completely destroyed was unprecedented as far as he knew.

"What happened?" he asked.

Bucky shot him a glance. Even if Steve hadn't been able to feel some of his emotions, he'd have known that he was torn between wanting and not wanting to talk about it.

"I wasn’t in Susquehanna last year, at the start of the year. My roommate, Brock Rumlow—he was randomly assigned to me, I guess, but he started trying to sell me on Hydra pretty hard. I don't know why they wanted me so bad, but at some point after I told them no, they started...I don't know. Hazing me?"

Cold dread settles into Steve's stomach, a combination of Bucky's feelings and his own. He knows that whatever happened to Bucky wasn't good, and he hates the thought of it. 

Bucky sighs. "At first, I thought Brock was okay. He was an all right roommate to start with, but after I said no to joining Hydra, stuff started happening." Bucky licks his lips, and Steve can't help himself. He scoots a little closer, silently offering whatever support he can. Bucky shoots him a quick look, and then lets his eyes drop to his hands again. His knuckles are white, the bone pressed taut against the skin.

"At first, I thought I was just, I don't know, forgetting stuff. Brock and his friends would move things around, 'lose' my assignments, and then tell me that I had done it. I didn't doubt him at first, because why would I? Who would do that kind of thing? But then they escalated and started spilling paint on my scripts, stealing one of all my pairs of shoes...someone pissed on my bed. And all the time, Brock and his friends were always around me all the time, telling me that I was making it up...I almost started to believe it, or to think that I somehow deserved it. I didn’t feel like I could tell anyone about it, because it sounded so crazy. But I talked to Nat, and she..."

"Jesus, Buck," Steve says. He doesn't stop to think, just reaches out and grabs the hands that Bucky's been staring at this whole time, taking them in his own. For once, Steve's not the one with the coldest hands, and he tucks Bucky's hands inside his own trying to warm them. Bucky squeezes back, holding onto his hands like they're a lifeline. "I started staying over with Nat as often as I could. Without her, I'd've gone crazy, I think. I guess Brock got irritated by the fact that I was barely around to torment."

Bucky's hands tighten on Steve's to the edge of pain, but Steve doesn't mind in the slightest. He wishes he could do anything to help.

"Their big prank culminated in tying me in a chair in the basement of their dorm. They were all wearing masks and telling me how they were going to hurt me. Joke was on them, though—Nat hacked my phone and recorded it all. She got some of the professors to come get me and Rumlow and his friends got kicked out of school and I pressed charges. Hydra was dissolved as a school society." Bucky grimaces. “I got a room transfer here for the last part of the year, and I roomed with Tim Dugan.” He’d graduated last year, Steve thinks he recalled. “He was a good guy, at least.”

"Bucky, that's fucking awful," Steve says. He can't imagine how that would feel, to be unsafe in the place you lived for so long, and then to be physically held against his will and threatened—to have willful malevolence directed at him by another human being—"Are you okay?"

"I am now," Bucky says firmly. "I don't know why they targeted me, but they're gone now. "Or, well—it's not fine that it happened. I don't know if I'll ever understand it, but..." Bucky shrugs. It's not a dismissive movement, but it's like he's forcibly setting aside what happened. "I started seeing a therapist over the summer, and that's helped me deal with it a lot."

"God, you're strong," Steve says, meaning it wholeheartedly.

Bucky laughs and squeezes Steve's hands again, shoots him a sidelong look out of the corner of his eye. "I don't know about that. I just did what I had to." Steve opens his mouth to keep talking, but Bucky goes on. "Anyway, that's why I wanted to live alone. But now I'm glad I didn't."

Affection surges up in Steve's chest, filling every hollow behind his rib cage. He doesn't try to stop it, and he knows Bucky feels it too, from the sharp way he turns to look at him. "Can I hug you?" Steve asks. He holds his left arm out to the side, silently telling Bucky that he'll keep it away from in any way letting their marks touch. But after that story, if Bucky wants it, Steve wants to assure himself that Bucky is real, and he's here, and he'd gotten through whatever it was they were trying to do to him. Bucky says he doesn't know why they wanted him, but Steve knows pretty well that bullies don't always need a reason.

Bucky spreads his arms in return, and Steve pulls him close, pulling him tight with his unmarked arm, and letting his other hand just rest on Bucky's bicep. He hopes that Bucky can't tell how hard his heart is beating, but even if he can, it doesn't matter. Steve just wants him to know that Steve's glad he's here. 

"I'm actually really grateful for the housing mix up," Steve mumbles into his neck.

Bucky squeezes him tight and then lets him go. Steve pulls back reluctantly. "Yeah, I am too. I didn't think I'd be saying that at the start of this year."

"I didn't either, but now I'm really glad." Steve reaches out and gives the fringe on his jacket a tug. "Hey, you want to go to the coffee house? We could get something to eat."

"Yeah," Bucky says. He gives Steve a long, measuring look, but Steve doesn't feel skewered by it. It actually feels kind of nice to be seen by Bucky Barnes. "Thanks, Steve."

Steve doesn't really think he's talking about the offer of a meal together. "Anytime," he says, and he finds that he means it.

*

Bucky's pleased at how little time it takes them to move the costumes down to Sam's car. With four of them helping, they pack the wardrobe into suitcases, and bring the empty wardrobe along with them so the clothes will have a chance to hang and let all the wrinkles fall out. It doesn't take much time, and while Bucky has always thought of himself as fairly in shape, he's kind of blown away by the way Thor's extra muscles ripple as he lifts the suitcases. It's uncanny—Bucky thinks he spots muscles in his arm that don't exist on normal humans. For some reason, though, it's not Thor his eyes seem drawn to, but Steve, who may not lift as much, but does more than his fair share and never complains about it. 

But then again, he didn't just unload his biggest secret on Thor. Steve listened to the--he's not going to call it shame. He didn't do anything to be ashamed of, as he and his therapist have discussed ad nauseum. He doesn't know how exactly to classify the whole experience. But it's not something he wants to unload on everyone he knows.

The thing is, Bucky really hasn't talked about it to anyone who's not his family, or his therapist, or Natasha. They can talk all they like about not being ashamed, but when it comes down to it, there's no reason for anyone else to know what Brock did to him, or how bad it had gotten. It's not anyone's business but his.

But maybe that's been a mistakeor maybe he was just waiting for the right person to tell, because now he feels lighter, as though a weight that's been crushing his chest has been lifted.

And maybe it had to be Steve. Maybe there's no way he could've gotten the words out if he hadn't been able to feel just how horrified Steve was, and how much he wanted to be there for Bucky. It was like sitting in warm sunshine after days of rain. Bucky doesn't think he's been dwelling on what happened last year, but even when he thought he's just been out there living his life, it's been in the back of his head.

And now it's not. Now he brought it out to the forefront, and then set it aside. Now that he's acknowledged it, he can be excited about the costumes, and about this dumb leather jacket that he's never giving back.

In the time it takes their friends to get there, he's had the chance to compose himself, but the real surprise had been how little he had needed to.

And that's because of Steve.

They get the suitcases loaded up into Sam's truck and take them over to the other side of the campus where the drama department is, of course, housed in the same building as the theater. Bucky loves the theater. It's vintage—it looks like an old movie theater, with velvet chairs, and ornate wallpaper. The stage is hard wood worn smooth with years and years of feet crossing over it, and the curtains are heavy velvet that obscures the backstage. The costume department is a floor down from the actual stage, and they pull Sam's truck around the back to unload the costumes under Professor Okoye's watchful eye. She's very interested in the other wardrobes, too, but told them not to worry about them at the moment.

They leave her to sort through the treasures, and head on their way, Sam to drive his truck back to student parking, and the rest of them walking back to the dorm. Sam catches up with them at the front steps of Susquehanna, and as they're all walking in, says "Hey, Steve, my band's playing tonight at the coffee house."

"I'll be there," Steve says, and Bucky thinks that he'll be spending the night on his own in their room. Maybe he'll call Natasha. There's no reason he should be feeling sort of lonely at the thought of Steve out having fun without him.

Steve rubs his chest absently, and says, "I wouldn't miss it." He turns to Bucky. "Hey, you should come with me." 

"Oh," Bucky says. He doesn't know why it's such a surprise, that Steve would invite him out to something like they're actual friends and not just roommates. He's known for a while now that he thinks very highly of Steve, and he's not an idiot; he knows that Steve no longer thinks he’s awful as well. He thinks he’d be able to tell that even if he couldn't feel what Steve is feeling. Behind Steve, Sam lifts one eyebrow in a pointed question that Steve doesn't see…because Steve is looking at Bucky. _Of course he is,_ Bucky thinks; _he asked you a question. You need to answer._

"I'd love to," Bucky says, and Steve breaks out into a wide, pleased grin. Bucky doesn't know if Sam's band is any good, but he'd suffer a lot more than a night of crappy music to make Steve smile like that. Alarm bells ring at the thought, but only faintly. It's not going to drastically alter the course of their lives if he spends a little more time with Steve. 

"We'll see you tonight," Steve says. Sam smiles, and Thor claps Steve on the back, miraculously not knocking him over, and only earning a halfhearted glare from Steve.

They go back up to their room, and Steve pulls his shirt away from himself and wrinkles his nose. "I'm going to take a shower before we head out," he says and Bucky assesses his own level of personal hygiene and sweatiness from carrying heavy suitcases up and down flights of stairs and decides that he, too, could stand a shower.

That faint sound of alarm bells lingers, though, which is why he waits a few minutes, texts Natasha, and invites her along too. He was thinking about her, and it's not like it was a date with Steve anyway, because it's not, but just in case his brain can't get the idea, and having his best friend there to tell him he's an idiot, and also as a buffer between him and any more than friendly feelings he might be having for Steve can only help.

 _sure, I'll come,_ she texts back. _you're an idiot, though_

It's not like he can argue, so he just thanks her and texts her the time they're meeting in the common room. Then he goes to the bathroom, too. Susquehanna is an old building, so the bathroom isn't very big, and Bucky can see Steve's feet in his shower sandals under one of the shower stalls. Bucky has to tell himself not to look, not to make it weird. Maybe he really does need Nat as a buffer after all. 

They get dressed and ready to go with Bucky managing not to say anything stupid, and he thinks about it as they meet up wtih their friends in the common room. He's felt so close to Steve since the attic. It had been freeing to let the whole sordid story of last year out, to tell someone who hadn't known a thing about it, like Natasha, and who hadn't been paid to listen to him talk about it, like his therapist. Steve had listened and been sympathetic, and if Bucky is to be honest with himself, he knew that's how Steve would be.

Steve is kind and funny and both righteous and self-righteous, and Bucky always thought he was good looking, but the more he knows him, the better he looks to him. Bucky bitterly wishes that they didn't have to deal with this stupid soul bond situation, because then he could ask him out instead of keeping him at arm's length when he just wants to pull him in closer. 

"Hey," Natasha mutters, driving an elbow into his side. "You're awfully quiet."

He turns his attention to his friend. "Just thinking."

"I can guess what about." Her gaze slides to Steve, walking ahead of them with Thor, saying something that requires a lot of hand gestures. His bony wrists peek out of the edge of his jacket as his hands move, his breath leaving puffs of white in the cold air.

"It was easier to keep my distance when I thought I didn't like him," Bucky says. Natasha snorts and takes his hand for just a quick second, giving it a quick squeeze before letting him go again. She's not an easily affectionate person, nor is she much of a toucher, so Bucky is touched.

"I told you he wasn't as bad as you thought," she says smugly. Bucky slows his steps just a little, and Natasha falls back with him, putting a little bit more distance between them and Steve and Thor.

"I told him about what happened last year," he says quietly.

Natasha lifts an eyebrow. "And?"

"He was really cool about it." Unexpectedly, Bucky has to swallow a lump in his throat. He shouldn't be so grateful just because someone was understanding and didn't think it was his fault, but Steve's immediate and unwavering support really moved him. Steve looks back over his shoulder, clearly feeling the surge of emotion from Bucky. He gives him a little concerned look, and Bucky shakes his head and smiles. He doesn't even have to force it; this is not the kind of emotion that's leaving him sad.

"You're a mess," Natasha says, looking back and forth between him and Steve, who has turned back around to talk to Thor. "But… good. I would've thought he was the kind of guy who wouldn't be a dick, and I'm glad to know it's true." Bucky nudges her, and she nudges him back, and they play fight the rest of the way to the coffee house, batting at each other and shoving into each other like absolute children.

The coffee house is pretty full when they get there. Bucky's not exactly surprised—there's usually a student performer of some kind every Thursday, and it doesn't say anything one way or another about the skill of Sam's band, but it's nice to see them setting up. There's a piano, a drum set, a guitar, and an upright bass, which he knows is Sam's because Steve told him. Thor excuses himself to go take over for the drum setapparently, the old Trouble Men drummer left, and Thor’s stepped in to take his place.

Bucky scans the crowd, seeing a lot of faces that he recognizes. In a lot of ways, he had been isolated from friends the previous year, and it's good to see people nodding and acknowledging him, like nothing had really happened. It's better, in a way, than if people made a fuss. They're a little early, so there are still tables open, and they grab some. Steve and Natasha go to the counter to get drinks, while Bucky and Loki hold the table.

As he does every time he comes into the coffeehouse now, Bucky scans the far wall, taking in the mural Steve made with something like pride swelling his chest. He didn't have a damn thing to do with it, but Steve did, and Steve is so talented. The whole wall is a spacescape, but space as seen through a much more whimsical eye, with weird and funny creatures traversing the nebulas. If Bucky admits it to himself, he's not proud because his roommate did this, he's proud because fate or biology or whatever had looked at him and looked at Steve and decided that they were, in one way or another, meant for each other, and it soothes something inside Bucky's soul to think that he could be a complement to someone as talented as this. And it's not that he thinks he's not talented—ego aside, he knows that he is. But it's different. It's one thing to inhabit a role on a stage, and another to come up with images like this. He doesn't know how Steve does it, and it fills him with something like wonder to think that he does. Plus, there's something about the mural that makes him feel calmer and happier to look at its. He can't exactly describe it, but it's as if Steve somehow distilled all the good times Bucky's had here, with friends, or by himself, and put them into the artwork. Bucky can't explain it, but he likes to look at it.

He shakes off the spell of Steve's work as Steve and Natasha return to the table. Steve is laughing at something Natasha said, and Bucky likes seeing them together—likes that his friends like each other. He settles in and accepts his coffee with thanks.

Steve leans forward. "Have you seen Sam's band play before?"

"I don't think so," Bucky says. "He's played music for productions I've been in, though."

Steve smiles. "Well, this is probably a little different."

The house lights go down, and the stage lights come up. Bucky feels a sizzle of excitement rush through him, even though it's not him who will be getting on the stage. Still, even though it's different from a play, there's something about the energy of a performance about to begin, the give and take between audience and performer. Bucky thinks it's its own kind of magic, different from whatever it is that lets Becca see what she sees and dream what she dreams. It's something special, a story being told between people, whether by way of music or of spoken words.

He recognizes the singer as a girl everyone calls Valkyrie or Val, although one time she got called on in class, the teacher called her Brunhilde, not that Bucky would ever risk death by doing that. Thor taps the drumstick against the edge of the drum four times to set a rhythm, and then, on the fifth beat, the piano, bass, and guitar all kick in together. Bucky shouldn't be surprised it's so good—he's heard all of these people play before. But it's a different style of music and entirely different from most of what he's heard, and he enjoys listening to it.

Steve leans over and nudges him, his mouth turning up into a pointed grin. "What do you think?"

"They're incredible," Bucky says honestly. Steve's smile widens into a grin, obviously pleased with Bucky's response, and then the two of them lean back and give the music the attention it deserves. They chat in between songs with Natasha and Loki, who seems to be watching Thor very intently. Bucky can't blame him—this isn't the first time he's noticed Thor's arms in the last week alone, and Thor is wearing some kind of shirt with the sleeves ripped off. Loki would have to be willfully ignoring those biceps out of spite, whichnot that Bucky thinks that would be out out of character, but Loki doesn’t seem to be doing.

But when Bucky's not looking at the stage, he's looking at Steve. It's funny to think that he ever thought that Steve was uptight when he looks at him like this, relaxed, clearly enjoying himself. He smiles when he catches Bucky's eye, and Bucky thinks that he's happy, surrounded by people that he likes, listening to his friends' music. Bucky is fortunate to get to see the side of him, he thinks.

They listen to four songs without incident, and the crowd gets bigger until there's hardly any standing room; the coffeehouse was never exactly big to begin with, and with this many people in it, it feels even smaller. The air is warm with all the body heat, and Bucky can see beads of sweat on Steve's upper lip, not that he's looking. The fifth song starts, and not thirty seconds into it, there's a loud screech of feedback from the equipment. Every single member of the band grimaces at once, and it would be funny the way their faces all looked almost exactly alike if Bucky's head wasn't pounding from the screeching. It suddenly cuts off, and Sam starts to pluck a baseline, but then a voice cuts in.

_Do not adjust your transmission. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical._

Bucky wonders for a moment if this old _Outer Limits_ shtick is part of the act, but one look at the band members’ faces says pretty clearly that it's not. They're looking around for the source of it, and V alis switching the microphone on and off. It doesn't make a difference to the voice, though, as the speaker goes on.

_The serpent society is rising. What has been ours, will be ours. You can join us, or be crushed by us._

Bucky shudders. This is the kind of vague but menacing bullshit that Brock had said when Bucky was at his mercy in the basement. He can feel the blood drain from his face, and whether or not Steve can see that in the dim light, he can clearly tell that something's wrong, because he takes Bucky's arm and wraps one thin, strong hand around it. 

"Come on," Steve says abruptly, and takes Bucky's hand. The screeching mechanical voice is still droning on, but Bucky tries not to listen as Steve pulls him outside. When they get outside, Bucky realizes that he's breathing fast, but he can't seem to slow his shallow, panting breaths down. It's cold, and he's shivering—his jacket is still inside at the table. His breath puffs out in little shallow clouds, and he feels as if he's unraveling.

But Steve won't let him. Steve has a hard grip on his arms, and pulls him close into a tight embrace, his hand stroking down Bucky's back—right over the soul mark, Bucky thinks absently, right over the red star that lit up when he touched it—and he's murmuring reassurances into Bucky's ear.

"Breathe with me," he says, over and over until Bucky can understand it. "Come on, let's get your breathing slowed down. Come on, Bucky." Bucky tries to listen. He feels—he doesn't know what he feels. He tries to listen to Steve, though, because Steve doesn't steer him wrong. He watches Steve's mouth, watches him as he breathes. He finally gets his breaths slow enough to match, and it seems like the increased flow of oxygen helps him think a little—enough to be embarrassed, anyway.

"Sorry," he manages. His voice sounds wrecked, as though he's been yelling, even though he didn't do anything besides breathe a little harshly. He wishes Steve hadn't seen it, but if it was going to be anyone, he's glad it was him. He hasn't had a panic attack since the summer; he'd been proud of himself for not having one when he moved into the dorm, and for not losing his shit when he ended up having a roommate instead of being alone. He’s sure that the Serpent Society bullshit is just that—a bunch of bullshit. But it’s that weird, entitled, creepy-sounding bullshit that makes him think of the things that Brock had said to him. It's starting to seem less like a new secret society trying to announce its presence on campus, and more like something ominous. 

The thing about the on-campus secret societies is that they're only secret to a certain degree. They have to register with the school and there are rules and regulations about what they can and cannot do. These strictures are in place to prevent the kind of bullshit Bucky went through last year, or at least to give a student recourse when things go wrong. Each secret society has at least one faculty advisor. Bucky knows all of this—he went through the system to report Brock et al last year, and take Hydra right the fuck apart, so he knows how it works.

Bucky takes a deep breath, his rabbiting pulse slowing down a little. There are systems in place that he can use to find out more about these assholes. He comes back to himself a little more. The screeching coming from inside the coffeehouse is over, and he can hear the murmur of voices, but no music.

"Let me grab our jackets," Steve says, and Bucky notices that they're both shivering.

"Okay," he says, and closes his eyes and just experiences the cold while he waits for Steve to come back. The sounds from inside the coffeeshop are a comforting dull hum, the presences of people near enough to remind him that he's not alone, but distant enough that he doesn't have to pay attention to them.

The door opens, and he startles, eyes popping open, but it's Steve. He hands Bucky's jacket to him, and then starts pulling on his own, and Bucky realizes that he didn't even take the time to get his own coat on before he brought Bucky's to him. Maybe he didn't want to leave him alone for any longer than he had to, not even the time it would have taken to get his coat on, and perhaps Bucky should be embarrassed again at the thought, but what he is, he finds, is really, really grateful. 

"Okay, let's go," Steve says, and gently tugs on Bucky's hand to get him moving.

"What about Sam and Thor?" Bucky asks, the thought struggling to the front of his brain like a bubble through mud.

"They're fine." Steve shivers and jams his free hand in his pocket. "Nat and Loki are staying with them to try and figure out what happened—not only did they somehow hijack the sound system, one of the speakers is completely fucked. That feedback must have blown it. But it didn't come from any of the mics that they can find, so..." He shrugs.

"Sorry we're having to leave early," Bucky says. "You don't have to—" 

"Yeah, I do," Steve says. His voice is firm and unwavering. "I’m not going to let you leave on your own." 

Bucky wonders, suddenly, guiltily, what exactly Steve felt from him through their bond. He isn't even entirely sure what he felt himself, only that it was intense and very bad and reminded him of last year. Steve keeps shooting him these glances like he wants to talk about it, but he doesn't ask, just leaves his hand in Bucky's, and Bucky's grateful. Steve's hand is cold, his fingers chapped and callused, and it shouldn't feel as good as it does to hold him like this. It's a guilty pleasure, Bucky supposes, but he'll take it; he's feeling so shaken at the moment, and if he knows nothing else, he knows he can lean on Steve, and Steve will be strong for him. He lets himself luxuriate in that, even though it isn't really his—can't be really his. At the moment, though, all his very valid reasons for feeling that way are a little hard to remember. 

When Steve slides his card through the reader at Susquehanna, Bucky feels his shoulders untense. Steve doesn't take his hand out of Bucky's, even though it makes it a little awkward to handle the card and the door. When Steve holds the door open for both of them, and they actually get inside the building, Bucky untenses further. He can't explain it, but he feels safe here, like the walls of the old building could protect him from anything, even though he knows better than anyone that it's not true. But still, he thinks, maybe if he had been here and not in Hoosic, the building wouldn't have wanted Brock to live there. 

It's manifestly stupid thinking, but he still feels comforted by it as they walk up to 313. Steve finally lets go of his hand to wrangle the door, and Bucky curls his own hand around the phantom feeling of Steve's fingers, holding it like a secret pressed to his palm. 

"It sounded like the kind of shit Brock said," Bucky says once the door is closed between the two of them and the rest of the world. "That shit coming over the speaker—about taking what was theirs and whatever. It was the kind of thing Brock said to me when they had me tied up." 

"Fuck," Steve breathes. "Jesus, you're so strong.” Bucky doesn't know how he can possibly stand Steve talking to him like that, like he's brave and admirable and good for having a fucking panic attack because some dingus hacked the PA system.

Bucky closes his eyes. "I don't know about that," he says. "But it occurs to me that there's a system in place for finding out who these people are. If there an actual secret society at the school, we can find out who their faculty advisor is, and get them to stop doing shit like that."

His eyes fly open as Steve takes his hand and squeezes. "We can talk to them tomorrow," he says, and Bucky thinks—he doesn't even have to ask Steve to do it with him. He knows Steve won't let him have to face this alone.

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky tells Steve what happened with his roommate last year: Brock tried to recruit him to Hydra, and when he didn't join, made his life miserable by isolating him and gaslighting him, then bullying him, culminating in a night where he and Hydra tied Bucky up in a basement and told him they were going to do terrible things to him. Whether they would have or not, Natasha interrupted and rescued him. Hydra was dissolved as a secret society, the teacher who was their liason fired, and Rumlow et al kicked out of school.


	6. in which there is a family feast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca comes to visit for Thanksgiving <3

**November**

Steve doesn't intend to become the spearhead of the _what the fuck is going on with the Serpent Society_ inquiry, but the next day, when he mentions going to talk to principal Fury about it, he feels such a surge of apprehension from Bucky, even though his face stays outwardly calm, that he finds himself saying, "I'm gonna ask Sam if I can go with him to report this incident, why don't you stay here."

Bucky's whole body relaxes minutely, the way it had when they walked back into the building the day before, and it would take someone far more hardhearted than Steve to try and make him go.

"You don't think you need me?" Bucky says.

"I don't see why we would," Steve says. "There were tons of other people who were there who saw it happen, and I think it might be more meaningful coming from the band, since it was their performance that was disrupted."

"If you're sure," Bucky says, and he's back to looking as though it's no big deal, and feeling just the regular amount of background "noise" of someone else's emotions, but Steve thinks—he just had to go through this entire reporting process last year, and even if it ended up with the school doing the right thing for him, it's still a lot to go through, and Steve imagines that it would stir up unpleasant memories, just like had happened the night before.

So instead he goes to see Sam and Thor in the morning. They’re already talking about reporting the incident. 

"I can come with you if you want," Steve says. "For moral support."

"Sure," Sam says, standing up from his desk chair. "Sucks that the show got interrupted," he adds, scowling a little. And Thor, behind him, nods, sliding his arms into his jacket and jamming a protein bar and his mouth at the same time, somehow.

When they get to principal Fury's office, Steve sees they're not the only ones with this idea, because Val is already waiting, arms crossed over her chest.

"Hey," she says. "That was a bunch of bullshit last night, huh?"

They all chat for a few minutes, and then principal Fury gets to his office, a briefcase tucked under one arm. He looks from student to student, taking in Thor and Val talking over each other about what happened the night before, and then says, "Well, I guess you better come in."

Steve has never actually been in Fury's office before. Most of the times he's interacted with him have been occasions when he's been addressing the entire school in the theater. Fury teaches some classes too, but they're mostly history classes, and while Steve finds history very interesting, he's only taken the minimum requirements in that area, preferring to focus his hours on his art, so he's never had Fury as a teacher.

Fury invites them all to sit down, and they do, and Steve ends up squished between Sam and Val on the overstuffed leather couch. Fury asks them to describe what happened, and they all talk about the disruption, and about how the speakers were blown, and how they couldn't figure out how any of it happened at all. Fury listens as they talk, his fingers steepled, and Steve finds his attention keeps getting pulled to the framed picture of a cat on Fury's desk—there don't seem to be any other family pictures or anything else really personal anywhere in the room. 

"And we were wondering," Steve adds, when Val, who's been doing most of the talking, seems to have come to a natural conclusion in her retelling, "Is this even one of the school societies? Is there a faculty member who's in charge? Because this seems like the kind of thing that's more disruptive than just an ordinary prank."

"I agree," Fury says, frowning. "I can tell you off the top of my head that there has not been a new student group application, and there is no staff member associated with any so-called Serpent Society. If this is a secret society at the school, it's an unofficial one."

"So who are they then?" Thor says.

"Sounds like a bunch of pranksters and vandals," Fury says, his scowl deepening. It looks particularly intimidating, focused as it is over his eye patch.

"What do we do about them?" Steve asks.

"Do?" Steve didn't think that Fury could scowl any harder, but it turned out, he can. "You don't do anything about it, Mr. Rogers. The faculty and staff will keep an eye out, and if it turns out that there's something that someone needs to do, we will do it."

Steve can feel his own face contorting, trying to match Fury's scowl. But the reason he's so mad is because of how it affected Bucky, and that's not something he can talk about without Bucky's permission—certainly not to all of their friends, who don't know about it. He has to be satisfied with the fact that at least he brought it up, and that the school is not allowing this to happen in its official capacity—even if it's not going as hard as he would like to stop it.

But the school is its own little contained community—there's the wall around the campus, and the gate where visitors sign in and out—and students, when they leave the campus. So even if it's not an official school secret society, the people painting the graffiti and leaving ominous, mysterious, definitely creepy messages in the middle of Sam's show—unless someone's really dedicated to sneaking in, those people are likely fellow students.

And Steve doesn't like the thought of that, not at all. If Fury won't take it is seriously as Steve wants him to, there's not much that Steve can do, he supposes, but he'll keep his eye out. He guesses that's all he can do.

*

Steve's sketching page layouts. They don't look like much—just little thumbnail sketches of how he wants to try and set up his pages. It's something of a struggle to do this without trying to make it look pretty, but he tries to keep his thumbnails as loose and energetic as possible. There's an energy in sketches that he sometimes has trouble translating into his finished pieces. And besides, he's much more likely to erase and redraw a layout that's not working if it doesn't look pretty.

He works out his thumbnails on printer paper with pencils and felt-tipped pens. Since he's not using speech in this project, he doesn't have to worry about the placement of dialogue bubbles, but making sure that the story is getting told through the actions is even more important. It's a struggle not to add details, sometimes, but he's doing his best. It had been hard to decide what he wanted to do for his senior project, once he'd even gotten it narrowed down to a comic.

He wants to use a lot of different styles and different techniques so that it's a showcase for what he can do, but he doesn't want it to be so different that the different styles don't cohere. And, he wants the story to be a little bit meta—a story about stories. He likes his idea and he hopes he can pull it off. His protagonist is a young man, not dissimilar from himself, he's aware, and his idea is to have the boy take a book off the shelf, but when he opens it and starts to read, the book flutters out of his hands and attaches itself to his shoulder blades. He and the book plummet out of the window, but the book flaps its pages, and they act like wings between his shoulder blades. He then flies through the book's story, and experiences the world of the book. And when he gets to the last page, that book flutters closed, and another one attaches itself to his back and takes him through its world. Steve wants him to go through three worlds, maybe five, experiencing a new world and a new style, and at the end of each world, he takes the book with him.

As far as metaphors go about experiencing a story and then taking it with you, carrying it around in the back of your head, Steve knows it's probably a little heavy-handed, but he's excited about it. He knows he wants the first book to be a fairytale, or maybe several fairytales together, that his lead protagonist can fly over. For this world, he wants to do a traditional media art style. Watercolors, he thinks, like old illustrations from children's books. 

Then after the fairy tales, he wants his protagonist to go through the comics pages, from old Sunday funnies like Brenda Starr and Prince Valiant through superheroes and modern indie comics. It's going to be hard to constrain himself to just a few different types of comics, but he's going to try. He's going to draw this series digitally, and mimic different art styles over time.

The third world is going to be a novel, but he hasn’t decided which one yet, and for this one, he plans on digitally painting the protagonist's journey through the story.

The hard things for all of them, the thing that he's having trouble distilling down to the essence, is what his silent main character _wants._ Steve could just draw him traveling through a bunch of different stories and taking them in, and that could be visually interesting, but it wouldn't really be a story. For the reader—viewer, whatever—to feel anything, he thinks, the character has to feel something, needs to _want_ something. What void is there in the protagonist's soul that will cause him to travel through worlds? What is he looking for?

Steve doesn't quite know, not yet. But he can lay out the first couple of pages while he's thinking about it. The frame story between books, he's going to draw in a simple black and white style, and he lets himself lay in a few spot blacks with his pen while he thinks about what his main character wants and needs and draws a complete blank.

"Whatcha doing?" comes Bucky's voice over his shoulder, and Steve was so intent on blobbing in a black shape that he didn't hear Bucky come into their room, and he only barely manages to lift the pen so he won't mess up the page as he jumps, heart thudding in his chest.

"Sorry," Bucky says immediately. "I didn't mean to startle you.

"It's all right," Steve says. Now that Bucky's interrupted him, he can feel a dull ache at the base of his spine, a much sharper twinge between his shoulder blades, and his fingers are going a little numb from holding the pencil too tight—a terrible habit that he's trying to break, but tends to revert to unconsciously when he gets into the creative flow. "I was just trying to figure out some of these page layouts for my senior project."

Bucky peers over his shoulder as he leans to the side and stretches, spine popping, and then stretches out his hands. "It doesn't look like much yet," Steve says, suddenly self-conscious about how loose and messy these drawings are.

"I get it," Bucky says. "I've seen your finished art, and I know it's a process to get there." He leans over, almost but not quite touching the paper in front of him with one forefinger, and Steve feels the heat of his body like a whisper on his own skin. "I wouldn't expect the walk-through to look like opening night, either."

"How's rehearsal going?" Steve asks. If he's got Bucky's schedule right—and to be honest he knows he's got Bucky's schedule right; it's not like he's been trying to memorize it or anything, but he can't help paying attention—then Bucky just came from rehearsal.

"Seems to be going pretty well, knock on wood." Bucky leans over and knocks against the pressed board of his desk. "Hey, did you—" Bucky's phone rings. "Hold on, it's my sister," he says, interrupting his previous thought.

Steve nods and then Bucky swipes to answer.

"Hey Becca," he says. "How's it going?"

Steve stands up and stretches. He isn't trying to listen in on Bucky's conversation, but it's hard not to hear what he was saying when they're both in their small room.

"Uh-huh," Bucky says, then, after a minute, "oh wow, good for them." He holds the phone between his face and his shoulder as he peels out of his coat. "You will? Well, thank you, I'd like that." He picks his phone up again in his hand, and flings himself down on his bed. He glances over at Steve. "I don't know, I'll have to ask him." He smiles at Steve, and lifts his eyebrows just a little. "Okay, then. I'll see you then. Love you too."

He swipes down on his phone, and tosses it on the bed next to him. "So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

Steve doesn't have to think about it; he knows what his Thanksgiving plans are this year: nothing. Between the fact that even with financial aid, the Rivers is an expensive private school, and the fact that their insurance was astronomical, given Steve's various issues, and given that his mother's medical bills were still an ongoing concern, Steve was planning to save on bus fare by spending the long Thanksgiving weekend at the school instead of going home. He'd spend that money on the bus ticket down for the long break in December.

"Nothing," Steve says. "I'm staying at the school over the break."

Surprisingly, Bucky breaks out into a wide grin. Usually when Steve says this kind of thing, he gets sad reactions and a talk about how much it sucks not to be with family for the holidays. Which, Steve doesn't disagree with that assessment; it just doesn't make him feel any better to hear how much it sucks. But Bucky is beaming at him just like he just said Christmas came early.

"Perfect! I'm staying over the break too, it turns out. My parents are going to be out of town at a conference, and my older sister Becca is coming to bring more food than the two of us could possibly eat over here for the holiday weekend. Please help us eat it, Steve. You'd be doing me a favor, saving me from the inevitable food coma that I'm going to go into when I stuff my face."

"Oh man, that's rough about your parents," Steve says, but the fact of the matter is that, selfishly, he is actually thrilled that he won't be spending the holiday alone. Not that he would've been completely alone; there are always other students who can't make it back home for one reason or another, and the cafeteria usually goes above and beyond to make sure that the people can't go home have something decent to eat, but a private meal of home-cooked food in their room sounds a lot better.

"Yeah, it happens." Bucky shrugs. "Mom's a research scientist and dad's a professor, and they go to a lot of international conferences that don't always take American holidays into consideration. But this will be fun—you'll love Becca."

"If you're sure you don't mind," Steve begins, but Bucky doesn't even let him finish.

"I'll be mad if you don't," he says. "I'm not going to be able to enjoy time with my sister if you're off eating in the cafeteria by yourself, gross." He bats his eyelashes. It's ridiculously over the top and Steve regrets to say it's really working for him. "You wouldn't do that to me, would you?"

"Of course not," Steve says, and Bucky smiles like it's settled. Steve would feel worse about it, but he can feel how pleased Bucky is about it, and well. That's that, isn't it?

*

The Rivers only has classes for the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. Wednesday through Friday are given over to traveling home and, presumably, stuffing one's face and trying to navigate whatever tensions exist amongst one's extended family.

Not this year, though, Bucky is happy to say. Not that he minds getting together with Becca and his parents, but most years he does get kicked out of his bed for the long weekend so aunts and uncles or cousins can sleep in it. There are a lot of Barneses, and if they all come from Indiana, it's a lot.

But Bucky skates through his Monday and Tuesday classes with a sense of excitement, because this year, it's just him and Becca and Steve. The classes don't really do much actual work—the class size is much diminished anyway, because even though class doesn't officially let out until Wednesday, a lot of folks who've come from farther away have gone ahead and left so they can spend more time at home. Bucky doesn't mind—the emptier campus feels kind of nice, and it's not like he's _alone_ alone. Steve is there, and Bucky is very carefully not letting himself dwell too long on how eager he is to have Steve with him over the holidays, how much he likes that the two of them are practically by themselves in Susquehanna after Tuesday.

Their friends have already made their way home to their families, with a lot of sympathy toward Bucky and Steve for staying at the school—or envy, in some cases, from people who weren't looking forward to seeing their parents for whatever reason.

Bucky's last day of class ends at noon, his afternoon chemistry lecture having been cancelled by Dr. Banner the week before, perhaps knowing from experience how few of his students would actually be in attendance. Bucky's been glued to his phone, waiting to hear from Becca when she gets close. She's got their parents' car, and she's told him that it's loaded with turkey and sides. Not that she had cooked it—their parents had ordered it from a local caterer for her to bring, rightfully not trusting in either of their progeny to cook an actual meal, although Becca, at twenty-three, was arguably more knowledgeable than Bucky, who could cook about five things reliably, and that was only if he counted scrambled eggs as cooking. So it’s really for the best that Becca is bringing premade food.

Susquehanna had started life as an inn in the 1890s and had been remodeled for the first time in the 1920s when the school had purchased the land where The Rivers now stood to make it feasible as a student dormitory, one of the first buildings where students had lived on campus. It had been updated several times as the school expanded and time went on, and the bathrooms and the kitchen were now pleasingly modern, even though the rooms still had period details like crown molding on the very high ceilings and dormer windows and tiny closets, and in some cases, built-in bookshelves, or the weird part of Steve and Bucky's room where their desks fit. The attic floor was a little warped, and you wouldn't want to put a marble on the wrap-around porch on the second floor unless you wanted to watch it roll off under the balustrades and onto the ground a story below. Not all the dorms had as big a kitchen as the one on the first floor of Susquehanna, so they would have plenty of room to heat their food. 

Bucky yanks his tie loose as he walks up the stairs to the third floor, taking the steps two at a time. He feels lighter already with the prospect of Becca and Steve to himself for the next several days, and no classes for almost a week. He unbuttons the top buttons of his shirt as he walks to the door—the worst part about having to wear a tie isn't the tie itself, but the top button of his shirt making a quiet attempt to strangle him. 

He lets himself in and finds Steve at his desk, scribbling something on a sheet of paper, earbuds in. Bucky lets the door swing shut, and Steve looks up when it closes, smiling. He's taken his contacts out and is wearing his glasses, which maybe shouldn't make Bucky feel as soft as he does, but he associates Glasses Steve with Getting Ready for Bed Steve, he guesses, and that's a Steve that's mostly for him these days. 

"Good day?" Steve asks.

"Short day," Bucky says, pulling off his shirt, "So yes."

Steve looks away, the way he usually does when Bucky changes clothes, and Bucky tells himself that Steve's just being polite, and that he's not disappointed that Steve's not trying to look. That would be childish and anyway, why should he want Steve to look? 

Instead, he just gets himself into some comfortable clothes and slumps down onto the bed to pass the time. He'd love to think he's capable of something productive, like Steve, who's turned back to his artwork and is making lines, but he's not. He tries to run lines in his head, but honestly, he already has them down cold, and his mind wanders. Away from itself! It shouldn't be allowed to have a brain so flighty, but he guesses it is, and he does, so he scoops up his phone to find something with which to amuse himself. 

Bucky's phone finally buzzes, and he jumps up from where he's been absently scrolling every app for the last twenty minutes.

"Becca's here," he announces. "She'll be at the parking lot in ten minutes. You want to come help me carry in the food?"

"Sure." Steve looks up from where he's been drawing at his desk. Still working on layouts, Bucky thinks, but there are also little character studies around the end of the page where Steve seems to be trying out different character designs for his project. "I'm excited to meet her."

They both pull on coats and hats, not in any real rush since they have a few minutes. Becca had gone to The Rivers too, although she had lived in a different dorm. She'd gone on to major in English in college and was now waiting tables while waiting for her internship at a lifestyle magazine to start in January. As a result, she tended to pull out all the stops when they were setting tables, and he wouldn't be surprised if she hadn't brought something to spruce up the common room.

"Is that her?" Steve asks, pointing as a car circles around the dorm to the mostly-empty parking lot.

"It is," Bucky says, already zipping up his coat as he spots his parents' SUV.

It's cold, but it's a beautiful, crisp, late-November day where the sun is shining, and the few leaves that are still clinging to tree branches are brilliant oranges and reds against the blue sky.

Becca jumps out of the driver's seat, curly brown hair glinting in the sunshine, arms held wide, and Bucky runs across the parking lot to meet her. They pull each other tight for a moment, and then she drives her fingers into his ribs. He's already twisting away, long since used to the way she abuses her knowledge of his ticklish spot, and already trying to stick his finger into her ear in retaliation. There's a few moments of vicious sibling squabbling as each tries to get the upper hand. Bucky's sure it looks really dignified, from the outside. Especially to Steve, who doesn't have a brother or sister to torment him.

"I'm Becca," Becca says, smiling, when they finally break apart because they're adults (and because Bucky got his finger in her ear, thereby winning.) "You must be Steve. I've heard so much about you."

Steve holds out his hand for her to shake. "Nice to meet you."

"Let's get the food inside," Bucky says as they shake hands. 

They move quickly to unload the car—and there's so much that even with three of them, their arms are laden with foil and plastic containers, and there's a little bit of an unintentional comedy routine as, hands full, Steve and Bucky try to get their keycards where they can swipe them over the reader on the door, but eventually they get inside, and get the containers into the empty refrigerator. Becca runs out to get another bag of stuff.

"Where's your luggage?" Bucky asks when she comes back in with just a few tote bags.

"Did you think I was staying in the dorm?" Becca shoots him a pitying look. "I've got the bank of mom and dad paying for a hotel stay, so I'll be taking advantage of that."

"Oh, good," Bucky says, relieved and a little embarrassed that he hadn't even thought about it until that very moment in time. "There are so many people gone, we could've gotten you somebody's dorm room—"

Becca does a full body, overdramatic shudder. "Look, I've done my time in the high school student dorm already," she says. "I'm just as happy to stay in a place where somebody's washing the sheets and nobody's spilled bong water on the rug recently."

Bucky shakes his head, but he has to admit that if he had a chance to use their parents card to get a hotel, he would do that instead of staying in someone else's dorm room, too.

They take a walk around campus, and Steve offers to let them go on their own if they have any brother-sister catching up they want to do, but Becca and Bucky both look at each other and snort. It's not that they can't have a peaceful conversation together, although that hadn't been true from the years of six to about fifteen of Bucky's life, but Bucky knows that Becca is itching to find out more about Steve.

Bucky hasn't said anything to his parents about his whole soul bond situation with Steve, because he's not sure what they would do, and all of the things that he can imagine would be making it worse, especially after everything that happened last year. They nearly pulled him from the school after everything that Brock and his friends had done, but Bucky had argued his case for the chance to finish his senior year at The Rivers. The fact that he had complained about having to have a roommate after all hadn't exactly been a point in the school's favor, and they had offered to get him a transfer to somewhere, anywhere else. 

But he didn't want to finish somewhere else, and he still doesn't. He wants to finish out his senior year, wants the specific education that he spent the previous three years getting to be complete. He wants to stay with the friends he's made, and he wants The River's name on his resume for the rest of his life. And, some tiny part in the back of his mind whispers, he wants to finish out his senior year _specifically_ with Steve as his roommate.

But Becca knows all of this. He's talked to her about it, safe in the knowledge that the sibling vault of secrets was safe from his parents unless he was in actual danger or admitted that he'd started doing heroin for fun or something.

So the three of them traipse through the campus. They make a loop around the body of water that's far too small to be a lake, even though that's what it's labeled on the campus map, but which the entire student body refers to as the pond. Even though it's early afternoon, they spot the family of herons that live on the bank. They walk through the buildings, and Becca shares stories of her time at school, and asks about the teachers and if they're still as annoying as they were when she went there. (Largely yes, although Bucky does feel fond of a few of them.) 

It's a really pleasant afternoon, and then when they're tired of walking around, they head back to Susquehanna to gorge themselves. There's so much food—far too much for three people—but that's good, because Bucky and Steve will be able to live off of the leftovers. Bucky is, personally, looking forward to his traditional day-after-Thanksgiving sandwich, which entails leftover turkey, of course, but also stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy all crammed into a dinner roll. All of these items are available in the largesse that Becca brought, but also sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and a salad. There are assorted cookies, but Steve also produces a pecan pie that looks amazing.

"Where did you get this?" Bucky says, leaning over to unsubtly sniff the pie, taking in the smell of pecans and butter and brown sugar. His stomach gives a growl that would be embarrassing if he weren't starving.

"I made it," Steve says, blushing, and Bucky can feel his eyes go wide.

"I didn't know you could cook," he says inanely, and Steve somehow blushes harder.

"Well, yeah," he says. "My mom's a nurse, so a lot of nights I was home first and I got tired of living on sandwiches, so Mom taught me to read a recipe and cook some basic things, and I just kind of taught myself from there."

Bucky and Becca both stare at him admiringly, and Bucky says, "Well, you'll have to teach me sometime."

"Yeah, Bucky can't cook for shit," Becca adds. 

"Hey," he protests in the world's worst attempt to defend his nonexistent honor in the kitchen. But then he has nothing to argue after that besides, "You're not any better."

Becca shrugs. "I have other talents. Steve, will you stick those rolls in the oven if you can find a space? Bucky, come help me with the table."

Bucky trails her into the common room. She pulls a tablecloth and place settings carefully out of her tote bags. "I like him," she says, passing him the tablecloth to unfold.

"Me too," Bucky says. He runs the tablecloth through his fingers; the cloth is thick and smooth and manages to have luster even under the shitty fluorescent lighting. "Are you for real? I was expecting paper plates."

"It's Thanksgiving," she says reprovingly, holding up a pale green salad plate with flowers around the rim. "Besides, i found these in a thrift store, they're not that fancy."

"They look fancy," Bucky says dubiously.

"They're not, not really. If you break them, it's not a big deal. Just try not to do it until after i take some pictures—I want to pitch an article about thrift store tablescapes to the magazine once my internship starts."

"Okay," Bucky says, and takes a little extra care in smoothing out the fabric. "Is this from the thrift store too?" 

"No, that one is mom's and it was really expensive," she says and he almost drops it. She shoots him a wicked grin. "The article's got to sell something, right? The settings are thrifted but the centerpiece and the tablecloth I bought new, and there are new plates very similar to the vintage ones I found that I can link to for people who like the aesthetic but don't want to go thrifting."

"Clever," he tells her, although he tries not to sincerely compliment her too often.

"So Steve," she says, _sotto voce,_ with a glance toward the kitchen, where they can hear Steve bustling around.

"What about him?" he asks cautiously.

"You seem like you don't mind him anymore." She takes the tablecloth from him and spreads it over the dinged-up common room table. 

"Well, yeah. I was only upset about having a roommate before I got to know him." He takes the bundle of folded fabric that she hands him. "What's this?"

"Chair covers. Just put them over those wooden chairs." He shrugs and unfolds the chair cover, turning it around until he figures out how it's supposed to go over the chair. "What about the—the soul mark? How's that going?"

He glances again at the kitchen—he can't help himself. He and Steve haven't talked about it, so he doesn't think he should talk about it with Becca—but it's easier to talk to her since she's not involved.

"Fine, I guess," he mutters. Then he summons up an actual sentence with content. "Better than fine, actually. He's a really good person. I kind of wish..."

"What do you wish?" Becca asks quietly. The plates are shining, she's pulled cloth napkins out of somewhere, with silver settings, and the whole thing looks wildly incongruous in their common room.

"I wish there wasn't a soul bond," he says. "I wish I could ask him out and there wasn't this whole supernatural weight on it." 

"Aww, Bucko," she says quietly, and he lets himself feel it for a moment: his predicament, her sympathy. The deep frustration of how it could be different, if everything were different.

"Becca?" Steve calls from the kitchen. "How long did you want to leave the rolls in?"

"I'm coming," she calls, and reaches out and gives Bucky's shoulder a squeeze, then passes him a long lighter he swears she pulled out of nowhere. "You light the candles."

He looks down and there are indeed several fat candles on the table, as well as a few long tapers. He shrugs and goes about his assigned task of lighting them, and just as he gets the last one lit, the overhead lights click off.

He looks up, surprised by the sudden relative darkness, but it's not actually _dark._ All the lamps are on, and between the lamps and the candles, the common room is lit in a golden glow. The rough edges of generic furniture that's been abused by years of students are softened in this light, the dirty corners of the room shrouded in concealing shadows. The light picks out the shiny edges of the plates, the gentle gleam of the thick tablecloth and the folds of the napkins. It turns their beaten-around-the-edges common room into something more, something beautiful and rare.

Becca surveys what she has wrought with deep satisfaction, and pulls out their father's fancy camera and snaps a couple of quick pictures. Bucky's still a little caught up in the way she's utterly transformed the room, and when Steve calls over her shoulder, "Should I start bringing the food in?" he jumps a little at the familiar (but still so unexpectedly deep) voice. 

"Nah," Becca says, and the spell is broken. "Let's take the plates in the kitchen and plate it up in there. I didn't bring any pretty containers for the food."

Bucky follows her back into the kitchen, and the smells that assail him as he walks through the door are rich and delicious. Steve's pulling the rolls from the oven, smiling at Bucky, and something tugs in his chest, low and resonant.

They load up their plates, and Becca makes them wait for a second while she takes pictures of the spread, and then they sit down. 

"I brought a bottle of wine," Becca says. "Do you want a glass?" Bucky nods, and Steve opens his mouth, frowning, and then she adds hastily, "Oh, wait! Bucky told me you don't drink. I brought tea and soda, too, what can I get you?"

In the end, Bucky opts for a glass of wine, and Steve has tea in a wine glass. The three of them toast, and dig in. The food is excellent, and they're all extravagantly complimentary of each other's cooking, since none of them actually cooked the food. They're more sincere when Steve brings out the pie, left to warm in the oven while they ate, and Steve blushes and waves their compliments away, but Bucky knows better than anyone (besides Steve) that he's actually extremely pleased with the praise.

They finish eating, complement each other on a wonderful evening once more, and then they pack up the rest of the food and start to clean up. With three of them, it goes quickly, and Bucky notes to Becca that they even managed not to break her fancy thrift store plates, which earns him nothing more than a laugh and a roll of her eyes.

They make plans to call each other in the morning and do something that involves being nowhere near any Black Friday sales that might be happening—there's a park with a beautiful botanical garden, not too far away, and if it's not too cold, they decide to try that, or else check in in the morning and reassess if the weather is bad. Steve tells Becca good night, and looks surprised but happy when she goes in for a hug instead of another handshake, and Bucky tells him he'll be back up in a minute, once he tells her good night.

He walks her to her car. Their beautiful day has turned into a beautiful night, the skies clear from clouds, enough that they can pick out a few stars, and in the distance, the glow of the city turning the corner of the sky orange.

"Happy Thanksgiving," Becca says, and spreads her arms wide. Bucky hugs her back tightly, her head tucked into his shoulder in a surprising reminder that he's taller than her now, and then he helps her load her place settings and stuff back into the car.

"Happy Thanksgiving, Becca. This was so nice."

She shrugs, but she looks pleased. "Well, you know, it was mom and dad's idea. I just followed through."

"Bet they didn't tell you to make the table look so pretty, or any of that," he told her.

"Well, no." Her smile turns sly. "Had to make a good impression on Steve, though, didn't I?"

"Well, it worked," he tells her. "He looked pretty happy about it." He feels his smile wilt a little bit. "Not that it matters, though, not in the long run—"

"Bucky." She grips his shoulder. "I'd have wanted to make a good impression on him even if he was just your regular old run-of-the-mill roommate with no accidental soul bond, so don't read too much into what I'm saying—I'm not trying to make you feel one way or another."

"I know." He makes his shoulders relax, because it's been such a nice night, and she's right—Steve's his friend, and he appreciates that his sister wanted to do something nice for him and his friend. "I'll see you tomorrow, all right?"

But Becca isn't listening all of a sudden. Her eyes go wide and her head tips back, looking up at the top of Susquehanna. There's a shine to her eyes, that he might think was reflected light if there were a light to reflect it from besides the front porch light illuminating the card reader, and if he hadn't seen it before. If he hadn't seen it before, he might be tempted to shake her out of it, but he has, and he knows what's happening isn't something he can do anything about.

"There's a shadow," she says. It's still her voice, but flat and monotone the way that Becca's voice never is. It's her voice, but with all the things that make it hers stripped away, leaving it a shadow of what he knows and loves.

"A shadow wrapped around this building," she goes on. "A snake's tail—a snake's tongue—a snake's venom on what lies inside this building."

He doesn't know what it means, but he makes himself remember the words, because she doesn't always, not when she snaps out of it.

"What snake?" he asks, but she gives no sign of having heard him.

"They will steal what is precious to you," she says, looking directly at him with that blank gaze. A shiver runs down his spine, and his skin erupts in goose bumps that have nothing to do with the cold.

Then light and sense returned to her eyes, and she looks at him. "Bucky…?"

"It's all right, Becca," he says, trying to reassure them both.

"I saw it," she says, and shivers. "A black cloud like a snake, twisted around the building." She shivers again and then looks at him. "I wish I knew what it meant."

She told him before, her gift is often useless until too late, when bits and pieces of the clues snap together to make a whole picture that whatever it was that she saw pointed to, only obvious in retrospect.

"It's okay," he tells her. "I think I know what you were talking about, at least a little."

"It doesn't feel immediate," she says. "I don't think there's any danger tonight. But I can stay with you, if you want."

"Go back to the hotel," he tells her. "We'll be fine. I'll call you in the morning."

Becca doesn't see anything else the rest of her visit, and they don't talk about it again. He catches her looking at him sometimes, and all he can do is meet her gaze and silently assure them both that he'll keep an eye out.

He doesn't tell Steve about what Becca saw.

It's not his secret to tell, for one thing; the things that Becca sees are for her to reveal or not if she wants to, and he feels uncomfortable talking about it to anyone, even Steve. Hell, he's never even brought it up to Natasha, and soul bond or not, she's his oldest friend at school, and the one who knows all of his secrets. The ones that are his, that is.

So the long weekend passes in a flurry of activities, with Steve and Becca alike, and he tries not to let himself think about how easily they fit together, Steve sliding in like he could be a part of his family forever. He tries not to think about how big his chest expanded, and the warmth that grew to fit there at the sight of the three of them eating Thanksgiving dinner like a family, at the way Steve and Becca hug goodbye on Sunday when she's getting back in the car to leave.

"Keep an eye on him," she whispers to Steve, loud enough for Bucky to hear it.

Steve shoots Bucky a sly look. "I will," he promises. That's the thing; Bucky wants him to. He makes it all too easy.

And then the weekend's over, and the dorm fills up with all the people who spent the holiday with their families, and it's back to their regular routine, except much worse, because of exams. Nothing's changed, not really. Nothing except that warm space in Bucky's chest.


End file.
